A Fitbit tracks your steps, an app counts your calories, and now a smartphone can monitor your heart rate. Now, a newly FDA-approved tool is helping one man fight Afib.
Tom Cooney, 70, is always on the go.
“Yeah I do a lot of traveling. Thousands of miles sometimes a week.” Tom says.
Even when he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a condition where patients have an irregular heartbeat, he didn’t want to let that slow him down. So when his doctor showed him a device that combines a smartphone case wired with electrodes, and an app that can let him monitor his own heart rhythm, he was in.
“You know when you go like this on your hand and you feel it going fast, that’s all you get, right, but when you see what’s going on with your, with your heart and the rhythm then you get a better idea of where you’re at,” Tom explains.
Tom was one of the first patients in a Cleveland Clinic trial testing the new device. Doctors found the new smartphone monitor was just as accurate as traditional monitors and was easier to use.
“Patients loved it and they found it fun to use. You get them engaged so now they’re not just a passive component,” Khaldoun Tarakji, MD, Electrophysiologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio says.
It’s making it more convenient for Tom to manage his healthcare.
He says, “I could tell if there’s something different with my heart than normally when I’m looking at this, so yeah it makes a difference, it gives me a sense of confidence as to where I am and what I should do.”
And keeping his health on par with his traveling schedule.
The device also allows patients to do virtual doctor visits when a physical exam is not necessary.