Study Results Published: CardioSignal Presents a New Clinical Modality for Heart Failure Detection Using Smartphones
April 8, 2024
Harnessing the motion sensors of a smartphone solves critical issues in health care resourcing and timely access to specialized tests in heart failure. A press release was also issued by the University of Turku regarding the multicenter study published in JACC: Heart Failure.
A multicenter study of over 1,000 participants achieved highly accurate results for using smartphones as a measuring device in the detection of heart failure, a rapidly growing health burden impacting ~60 million patients worldwide (1). The study results were published in JACC: Heart Failure, titled: Smartphone-Based Recognition of Heart Failure by Means of Microelectromechanical Sensors.
The pivotal capability is based on a proprietary gyrocardiography method and paves the way for a completely new heart failure detection method in the hands of primary care. It can help professionals to detect signs of heart failure faster in patients who are often unaware of their condition (2) or who must wait a long time for the testing they need.
Results revealed an 89% diagnostic accuracy, AUC of 0.95, sensitivity of 85%, and specificity of 90%. The measurement was taken by placing the phone on the patient’s chest for two minutes to obtain cardiac motion signals. Approximately 1,000 participants were enrolled in an inpatient and outpatient settings from three trial sites: Stanford University Hospital (USA), and two university hospitals in Turku and Helsinki (Finland). As many as 38% of the patients with heart failure also had atrial fibrillation, demonstrating accurate performance regardless of the presence of atrial fibrillation or heart failure subtypes.
“Primary care is usually the first to assess a patient with underlying heart failure, but the detection tools available are very limited to diagnose this complex disease. Our technology can address this urgent clinical unmet need and offer a highly scalable detection method for doctors and nurses in primary care and in a remote patient monitoring setup, essentially addressing the current cardiology bottleneck in hospitals,” says CardioSignal co-founder and CEO, cardiologist Juuso Blomster.
Limited resources, limited access to tests, and long waiting lines increase the risk of delayed diagnoses or misdiagnoses in heart failure: Over 30% of patients receive their heart failure diagnosis only after being hospitalized, despite having symptoms often for months or years (2). The symptoms (fatigue, shortness of breath) are common in a wide range of conditions. One study found that less than 40% of patients suspected to have heart failure are assessed with a blood test that measures natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) when decompensated heart failure is suspected (3). Digital cardiac biomarkers enable faster checks in a high volume of patients instead of referring the patient for laboratory testing requiring specialized interpretation.
“Bringing heart failure detection capability available as a medical device in Europe is the next big step for CardioSignal. Heart failure is the area where our technology can make the biggest health impact in the world,” Blomster continues.
The technique in practice:
Based on a proprietary gyrocardiography method that measures cardiac-induced mechanical vibration at the chest surface.
The sensitivity of smartphone motion sensors is extremely high and can capture vibration below the human hearing threshold (20Hz).
In the study, the measurement lasted two minutes and was taken in the supine position with a mild bed tilt of up to 45°.
The participants were instructed to breathe normally, avoid any unnecessary movements, not to touch the phone, and to keep their arms relaxed by their sides.
Measurements were taken in the inpatient and outpatient settings by a health care professional and by the patients themselves at home.
Read the article: Haddad, F, Saraste, A, Santalahti, K. et al. Smartphone-Based Recognition of Heart Failure by Means of Microelectromechanical Sensors. J Am Coll Cardiol HF. 2024 https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jchf.2024.01.022
References 1. Bozkurt et al. Heart Failure Epidemiology and Outcomes Statistics: A Report of the Heart Failure Society of America. J Card Fail. 2023;29:1412-14512. Alexander T. Sandhu et al, Disparity in the Setting of Incident Heart Failure Diagnosis, Circulation: Heart Failure (2021); vol. 14, No. 8.3. Bosch et al. Heart failure in primary care: prevalence related to age and comorbidity. Prim Health Care Res Dev. 2019;20:e79.