90.15 Conclusion of the Review about Accuracy Studies of Consumer Grade Heart Rate Monitors

Is there a recommendation for an ECG device or a chest trap as «Gold Standard Reference Device» to study the accuracy of consumer grade heart rate monitors?

No. At lower speeds, or with activities which do not cause ECG motion artifacts, both chest straps and ECG devices are suitable as reference devices.

There where studies performed with ECG devices which costs between 8000 USD and 50 000 USD. Data obtained with these devices should be very accurate.

When motion artifacts comes into play, choose a device, which can handle with motion artifacts. Different ECG devices offer motion artifacts removal options. But little is known about the effectiveness of these algorithms.

The costs for ECG reference devices which are accepted by a high quality scientific journal might be «Gold Standard». We recommend to find a partner lab which already has a high quality ECG device.

There are novel algorithms available for noisy PPG and ECG signals. We do not know whether these already have been used for consumer grade accuracy studies, but we think it is worth to test them.

If we use a Toolbox like HeartPy, is there a reason to use or buy a second ECG toolbox? And if we do not need the software which is bundled to an ECG recorder, is it worth at all to buy a high quality ECG recorder?

To build a high quality ECG device has become easy. There are excellent instructions available as shown in the discussion here. To use them in combination with a Toolbox like HeartPy, and we have potentially one of the best if not the best reference ECG device to study the accuracy of consumer grade heart rate monitors. We can easily increase the accuracy of these devices by increasing the sampling rate, the number of channels, the number of ECG electrodes, and invest even more time to find the best algorithms to remove motion artifacts, to become a leader in the community of the accuracy testers.