Can a smart phone help diagnose heart conditions earlier?

The IPED (Investigation of Palpitations in the Emergency Department) study: Randomised controlled trial of the use of a smart phone based event recorder versus standard care for patients presenting to the emergency department with palpitations and pre-syncope

Around 300,000 people in the UK attend hospital emergency departments each year with palpitations, which are irregular heartbeats, and presyncope, a sudden feeling that you are about to lose consciousness. In some patients, these symptoms could reflect an underlying abnormal heart rhythm that that could be too slow, too fast or irregular. However, diagnosing these conditions in the emergency room is difficult as many patients have recovered on arrival and their examination and electrocardiogram (ECG) are normal. Many patients will go for years without diagnosis because the only way to establish the heart rhythm problem is to capture an ECG during an episode. Recent technology advances have now made it possible to monitor the ECG using a mobile device. But there has not been much research into the use of these devices in people presenting with palpitations in an emergency. In this project, Dr Matthew Reed hopes to show that a smart phone event recorder will allow patients like these to record their own ECG if they have symptoms again. He will be recruiting 242 patients and will ask them to record their own ECG if they have another episode. He believes this could help doctors diagnose abnormal heart rhythms more quickly and effectively and could revolutionise emergency department care.