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Tracking Afib On Your iPhone

From Dr. Westby G. Fisher, writing at MedCity News:  "Patient illustrates how the iPhone and $1.99 could disrupt the medical device industry."

"Today in my clinic, a patient brought me her atrial fibrillation burden history on her iPhone and it cost her less than a $10 co-pay. For $1.99 US, she downloaded the iPhone app Cardiograph to her iPhone.

[...]

"I got a relative picture of how often she was having afib and she got the opportunity to help me with her care.

"Was this a medical device? No, it was an iPhone app. Was it perfect? No it wasn’t. I certainly couldn’t differentiate frequent PAC’s or PVC’s from atrial fibrillation reliably. It was NOT an EKG after all. But we were past that point in her evaluation. I just needed to know how often she was having her known paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and she wanted to keep a convenient record of her episodes.

"Was it helpful in this case? Absolutely.

"More importantly, she just saved herself and the health care system a ton of money. "
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christine said…
We should all be careful of the different applications we install in our devices. Remember, not all of them work.
July 28, 2012 at 11:31 AM
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