[Image courtesy of Verily]
The study showed that walking behavior captured by the Verily Study Watch is associated with different levels of heart failure (HF) risk for asymptomatic individuals, or those at risk of developing HF compared to healthy patients. Researchers published their evaluation of the research-indicated device in the Journal of Cardiac Failure.
A previous publication from Verily validated a suite of 18 digital measures of walking and ambulatory status classification. Building on this, the latest study employed the walking measures. Meany of them showed significant association with pre-clinical stages of HF. Measures collected from a real-world setting also correlated with in-clinic tests and surveys of physical functioning.
The analysis included more than 1,200 participants from the Project Baseline Health Study (PBHS) Verily launched in 2017. PBHS aimed to help researchers better understand health and disease. A longer, longitudinal study, PBHS included participants with diverse backgrounds, representative of a wide spectrum of health.
Verily says PBHS shows that participants with subclinical HF had lower walking cadence and pace when compared to healthy or at-risk individuals. Dr. Francois Haddad, clinical professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford Medicine, says this can extend to future studies to determine how real-world walking behavior can identify individuals at risk of heart failure or clinical worsening.
“As we look to the future, longitudinal registries combined with novel data collection methods will play an important role in generating evidence that represents broad populations,” said Dr. Andrew Trister, chief medical and science officer at Verily. “This study shows the potential for us to continuously learn about patient health and to use that knowledge to more precisely treat and manage disease.”
