Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Supplies and Components Index
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • MedTech Resources
    • Medtech Events in 2025
    • The 2024 Medtech Big 100
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Subscribe to Print Magazine
    • DeviceTalks
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Educational Assets
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Voices
    • Views
    • Video
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2021 Winners
  • Women in Medtech
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

Smartphone Detects Atrial Fibrillation with Existing Hardware

August 29, 2016 By European Society of Cardiology

Smartphones can be used to detect atrial fibrillation with existing hardware, according to research presented at ESC Congress 2016. A low-cost application (app) has been developed that uses the phone’s own accelerometer and gyroscope to check for atrial fibrillation.

“Atrial fibrillation is a dangerous medical condition present in 2 percent of the global population and accounting for up to seven million strokes per year,” said lead author Tero Koivisto, a vice-director of the Technology Research Centre (TRC), University of Turku, Finland. “In the European Union alone this heart rhythm disorder costs approximately USD $19 billion every year.”

Around 70 percent of strokes due to atrial fibrillation could be avoided with pre-emptive medication. However, atrial fibrillation often occurs randomly on/off and is difficult to detect by visiting a doctor. There are relatively large and costly electrocardiogram (ECG) devices that patients can take home for long-term monitoring but they require a patch or wires that are clumsy to use and continuous contact with electrodes tends to irritate the skin.

Due to the above constraints, current methods for detection of atrial fibrillation are infeasible for wide-scale screening of populations or higher risk age groups (60 years and above).

The current study tested the ability of a smartphone to detect atrial fibrillation without any add-on hardware. The study included 16 patients with atrial fibrillation from the Turku Heart Centre. In addition, 20 recordings from healthy people were used as control group data to validate the developed algorithm.

To detect atrial fibrillation, a smartphone was placed on the chest of the patient, and accelerometer and gyroscope recordings were taken. Patients were advised to lie in a prone or supine position during the measurements.

Mr Koivisto said: “We use the accelerometer and gyroscope of the smartphone to acquire a heart signal from the patient. A measurement recording is taken, and the acquired data is pre-processed by signal processing methods. Multiple features such as autocorrelation and spectral entropy are then extracted from the pre-processed data. Finally, a machine learning algorithm (KSVM) is used to determine if the patient suffers from atrial fibrillation.”

Using this technology the investigators detected atrial fibrillation with a sensitivity and specificity of more than 95 percent.

“We measure the actual motion of the heart via miniature accelerometers and gyroscopes that are already installed in today’s smartphones,” said Mr Koivisto. “No additional hardware is needed and people just need to install an app with the algorithm we developed.”

He continued: “If people feel odd and want to check their cardiac status, they can simply lie down, place the phone on their chest, take an accelerometer and gyroscope measurement, then use the app to analyse the result. They will get a simple yes/no answer as to whether they have atrial fibrillation or not.”

Mr Koivisto concluded: “This is a low cost, non-invasive way to detect atrial fibrillation that people can do themselves without any help from medical staff. Given the widespread use of smartphones, it has the potential to be used by large populations worldwide. In future, a secure cloud service could be created to store and analyse larger masses of data.”

Related Articles Read More >

Min-Vasive Medtech: Live interviews and audience Q&As with minimally invasive engineers from Edwards Lifesciences, Jupiter Endo and Compremium
An illustration of Embolization Inc.'s Nitinol Enhanced Device (NED).
This nitinol vascular embolization device has another shape memory material up its sleeve
A photo of nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy used for medical devices such as stents, heart valves, catheters and orthopedics.
What is nitinol and where is it used?
July 2025 edition: The Surgical Robotics issue, featuring Capstan Medical, J&J and Zimmer Biomet
“mdo
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest medical device business news, application and technology trends.

DeviceTalks Weekly

See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Medical Design Sourcing
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to our E-Newsletter
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media LLC. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Supplies and Components Index
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • MedTech Resources
    • Medtech Events in 2025
    • The 2024 Medtech Big 100
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Subscribe to Print Magazine
    • DeviceTalks
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Educational Assets
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Voices
    • Views
    • Video
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2021 Winners
  • Women in Medtech
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe