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

1490. Things scientists & medical doctors need to know about smartwatch accucacy tests: Rob ter Horst, YouTube video maker of the YouTube channel “The Quantified Scientist” versus Milind Desai, Cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio

Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org would like to thank Rob ter Horst for his YouTube video about the Polar H10. Was it especially made for Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org and suggested to him by Polar Electro Finland?:

Rob ter Horst reviewed this paper in this video which was partly funded by Polar Electro:

(1) RR interval signal quality of a heart rate monitor and an ECG Holter at rest and during exercise

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004219

But for us personally Cardiologists Milind Desai, Vice-Chair of Education at the Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio:

was more convincing as a smartwatch accuracy tester than Rob ter Horst with a paper written at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio in 2019:

(2)Accuracy of commercially available heart rate monitors in athletes: a prospective study“:

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

Has Milind Desai’s group given up smartwatch accuracy testing after the year 2019?

His group tested:

The Apple watch 1 heart rate accuracy in a paper published in 2017

(3)Variable Accuracy of Wearable Heart Rate Monitors during Aerobic Exercise

  • Was the release of the Apple watch 1 the reason to publish this paper, it was the most accurate watches in the paper. Was it a demo paper offered by Apple?

https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2017/08000/Variable_Accuracy_of_Wearable_Heart_Rate_Monitors.22.aspx

  • the Apple watch 3 was tested for heart rate accuracy in a paper published in 2019:

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

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

  • The Apple watch 3 was the most accurate watch in this paper. What was striking in this paper was that a treadmill protocol was chosen with speeds up to aoubt 15 km/h which allowed very accurate testing as the only testing protocol. Was it again a demo paper offered by Apple?
  • And the accuracy of the Apple watch 4 was testedin another paper published in 2019:

(4)”Accuracy of the Apple Watch 4 to Measure Heart Rate in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation”:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32128290

  • Was this again a demo paper by Apple? But the last one to this date?

The researchers at the Cleveland Clinic did after their last paper they published on 13 December 2019 about the Apple watch 4 mentioned above not publish new papers about smartwatches.

And we only know of Rob ter Horst who continues to do scientific smartwatch accuracy tests on YouTube. But we strongly doubt about the scientific results Rob ter Horst publishes there.

Why did Rob ter Horst not choose the methods Milind Desai’s group used with a treadmill and 3 channel ECG devices for runs on a treadmill up to about 15 km/h? Are these not the the most accurate methods which are available to test smartwatch accuracy?

And we do not know of scientific papers who have confirmed Rob ter Horsts results he published on YouTube about smartwatch accuracy.

And there is another paper about smartwatches which was published in Nature about ATRIAL FIBRILLATION:

(5) The Apple Watch can detect atrial fibrillation: so what now?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-019-0330-y

Published on 23 December 2019

And do scientists & medical doctors need to know more about smart watch accuracy tests than what is written in the papers 1 – 5, and what is mentioned on this page written by Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org?

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