Peter Gamma (Physiologist & Director) Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

Can commercially available heart rate monitors also be used for clinical applications which study HR accuracy?

Last Updated on January 5, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

  • We do not know of anybody who has demonstrated that this possible for HR accuracy studies.
  • We do not know of anybody who uses commercially available heart rate monitors for clinical applications which study HR accuracy.

A paper on which the cardiologist Dr. Milind Desai from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio was last author was published in:

Cardiovascular Diagnosis and Therapy

in 2019:

Accuracy of commercially available heart rate monitors in athletes: a prospective study

Selena R Pasadyn, Mohamad Soudan, Marc Gillinov, Penny Houghtaling, Dermot Phelan, Nicole Gillinov, Barbara Bittel, Milind Y Desai

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/

Rob ter Horst uses a Polar H10 as a reference device, Adinstruments says, their 2 lead ECG Equivital with Labchart software is ECG noise and movement artefact free. But according to the paper of Milind Desai mentioned above, 3 lead ECG is gold standard for HR measurement. For these reasons, a 3 lead ECG device is a better reference device than a single lead Polar H10 chest strap or a 2 lead Equivital sensor belt.

a comparison table of accuracy values of this paper can be seen here. The mentioned paper above is [90.8.5]: