A Portable Ecg Monitor For Near-Real-Time Monitoring Of Patient’s Cardiac Signals
True to its name, a portable ECG monitor enables the remote monitoring of a patient’s heart electrical activity. It is habitually ideal in cases where patients exhibit fewer or intermittent symptoms, which are potentially linked to a heart arrhythmia. Portable ECG monitors typically come in the form of wearables that patients can attach to specific parts of their bodies to record their heartbeat and other data. Some portable ECG monitors can automatically capture heart activity during events. Others require patient intervention by way of buttons/triggers to perform the recording.
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What Does a Portable ECG Monitor Do? What Makes it Unique?
Portable ECG monitors are not just to be prescribed to patients by doctors. The technology allows patient-initiated care, as you can get yourself a portable ECG monitor, under the guidance of an experienced remote cardiac monitoring service. Then you can share the ECG data you have recorded with your care provider to assess your condition. Portable ECG monitors are most desirable for this ability to get the patient more involved in the care process.
Unlike conventional ECG monitoring solutions, ECG monitors conveniently enable remote monitoring of heart activity, and possess a particular suite of attributes, namely:
- User-friendliness (making them great for patients with non-technical backgrounds)
- Lightweight design (ensuring comfortable long-term use)
- Compact build (fewer leads to further elevate comfort)
- Long-life Li-ion batteries to ensure extended service that maintains diagnostic visibility
Why Near-Real-Time, Portable ECG Monitoring Is Crucial
In the past, cardiac monitoring devices didn’t have remote monitoring capabilities, at least not in real-time anyway. The technology would be recommended to a patient, and the data recorded for the entirety of a specific monitoring window. Then, the technician would retrieve the device and assess the data.
However, such protocols meant a delay in treatment or medical intervention, which compromised patient outcomes due to ongoing tissue damage. Today, portable ECG monitors solve this and other challenges that arise with delayed monitoring. Such devices, due to their near-real-time heart activity tracking capabilities, have enabled the following:
Correlation Of Heart Problems To Lifestyle Factors
In the previous case (where monitoring lacks real-time capabilities), the physician can find data around arrhythmias or ECG abnormalities. But it would be hard to understand if environmental or lifestyle factors were to blame. That’s unless the technician performs manual reconnaissance to retract the patient’s steps regarding activities at the time of the event.
It gets a lot easier with a near-real-time heart performance monitoring service, which enables physicians to access prompt and time-stamped data relating to a cardiac event. Consequently, it becomes simpler to also pinpoint these abnormalities to a particular activity or environmental factor.
For instance, Cardiac Rhythm provides monitoring in near real-time and also equips patients with diaries to record:
- Exact symptoms
- The activity being performed at the time
- What time the symptoms occurred
Via a physician portal, clinicians can also personalise patient reports via mobile devices. Including the full digital ECG report.
Early Treatment Intervention
In some cases, monitoring can last for up to 30 days. With legacy technology where physicians have to periodically perform walk-ins to check on the data, then medical intervention may not be presented to the patient as soon as it is necessary.
Portable ECG monitors solve this challenge with near real-time cardiac monitoring. ECG technicians set thresholds and alerts for when certain metrics deviate off-range. And when that happens, technicians can perform an ECG interpretation to identify any signs of patient deterioration. As a result, the medical team can offer promPt treatment, sometimes even in cases of asymptotic events where arrhythmias occur but don’t result in any symptoms for the patient.
With early intervention, patients and physicians also benefit in the following ways:
- Shorter recovery window
- Faster return to normal life
- Lower risk of hospitalisation
- Lower healthcare spending
Wider Arrhythmia Search
Portable ECG devices also widen the window of arrhythmia diagnosis beyond the limitations of the physician’s office. These devices allow clinicians to keep track of their patients’ vitals 24/7 in a near-real-time fashion. This proves especially crucial in asymptotic cases or situations where arrhythmias are transient and very sporadic, to the point that they would be missed by a standard ECG.
The technology allows for the tracking of heart rate and rhythm remotely, around the clock, regardless of time or distance. Thus, asymptomatic arrhythmias can come to the fore to enable treatment and avert grave repercussions such as:
- Sudden cardiac death
- Heart failure
- Stroke, etc
Cardiac Rhythm’s Biosensor- The Next Step Of Cardiac Evolution
Rising to the forefront as a powerful arrhythmia monitoring tool, Cardiac Rhythm’s biosensors offer a unified solution that allows healthcare providers to hit two birds with one stone. The device serves both long and short-term monitoring needs and allows patients and physicians to uncover the true incidence of heart problems. This biosensor makes for one of the best cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices, also due to a care management platform that helps technicians to classify arrhythmias. Learn more about the revolutionary biosensor and get it for yourself on the Cardiac Rhythm website today.