Abstract
The use and deployment of mobile devices across society is phenomenal with an increasing number of individuals using mobile devices to track their everyday health. However, there is a paucity of academic material examining this recent trend. Specifically, little is known about the use and deployment of mobile heart monitoring devices for measuring palpitations and arrhythmia. In this scoping literature review, we identify the contemporary evidence that reports the use of mobile heart monitoring to assess palpitations and arrhythmia across populations. The review was conducted between February and March 2018. Five electronic databases were searched: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), CINHAL, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus. A total of 981 records were identified and, following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, nine papers formed the final stage of the review. The results identified a total of six primary themes: purpose, environment, population, wearable devices, assessment, and study design. A further 24 secondary themes were identified across the primary themes. These included detection, cost effectiveness, recruitment, type of setting, type of assessment, and commercial or purpose-built mobile device. This scoping review highlights that further work is required to understand the impact of mobile heart monitoring devices on how arrhythmias and palpitations are assessed and measured across all populations and ages of society. A positive trend revealed by this review demonstrates how mobile heart monitoring devices can support primary care providers to deliver high levels of care at a low cost to the service provider. This has several benefits: alleviation of patient anxiety, lowering the risk of morbidity and mortality, while progressively influencing national and international care pathway guidelines. Limitations of this work include the paucity of knowledge and insight from primary care providers and lack of qualitative material. We argue that future studies consider qualitative and mixed methods approaches to complement quantitative methodologies and to ensure all actors’ experiences are recorded.
Highlights
In the past two decades, there has been a phenomenal increase in the take-up of wearable mobile devices, with many facilitating the measurement of a variety of health outputs
We found a high prevalence of asymptomatic Atrial tachycardia (AT) and frequent supraventricular ectopic complexes, which may be relevant to development of atrial fibrillation (AF) or stroke
To ascertain how mobile ECG devices could affect the delivery of primary care, we suggest that a large-scale feasibility study, encompassing variable populations, should be conducted to provide results to different actors
Summary
In the past two decades, there has been a phenomenal increase in the take-up of wearable mobile devices, with many facilitating the measurement of a variety of health outputs. This paper provides limited information and lacks critical insight into the deployment of mobile ECG monitoring in primary care settings. It does not account for the perspective of health practitioners, physicians, and cardiologists. In the UK, the National Institute for Health Care Excellence (NICE) [10] provides health information guidance, policy and practice, procedures, and standards. This guidance is informed on evidenced-based studies for clinical practitioners, public health practitioners, and social care institutions employed across the National Health Service (NHS).
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