Last Updated on January 25, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
First Rob ter Horst does not publish in detail his testing protocols therefore we cannot veryfy his data. And even if other scientists took similar testing protocols than Rob, we do not know if it is possible to get a similar plots as Rob has obtained by a second quantitative scientist.
If we study the papers from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio closely where they tested consumer grade heart rate monitors against 3 channel ECG devices:
We can find there in the literature that reproducibility for ECG heart rate data requires:
- A 3 channel ECG device
- The correct placement of the electrodes
- A trained person who checks every single ECG peak
These are the requirements for reproducibility which have been calculated in the scientific literature, it is a paper which has been cited many thousand times. And this is also the gold standard for heart rate measuremens, which means this is the method with the highest accuracy for heart rate measurements. If these requirements are fullfilled ECG data are reproducable, if these requirements are not fullfilled ECG heart rate data are not reproducable.
And if we look at the scientific papers about consumer grade optical heart rate monitors we do not know of a single paper who reproduced the heart rate data of another paper. And we do not know of any scientific papers which say something about the reproducablity of heart rate data of consumer grade heart rate monitors.
What we publish here in our journal is evidence that heart rate data from consumer grade heart optical heart rate monitors cannot be reproduced. But our journal has not investigated this topic systematically and scientifically.
The scientific studies we know which make heart rate measurements at the highest level use at least 3 channel ECG devices.
We did not find a second Rob ter Horst who confirms the plots of the first Rob ter Horst. To be statistical significant, we estimate it would require about 16 Rob ter Horsts to have a scientific proof for the statement of Rob ter Horst which we haven’t, and we do not know if this ever will happen?
From the data we studied we suppose that Rob ter Horsts data cannot be reproduced. And who invests so much time to show that heart rate data from consumer grade heart rate monitors cannot be reproduced? Therefore we do not know if someone ever will proof that heart rate data from consumer grade optical heart rate data can be reproduced or not.