Sensors, wearables and mobile health applications that collect health information have entered both people’s daily lives and the field of medicine.

There are currently more than 600 mobile devices collecting information.

These wearable devices usually take the form of a smart watch but also exist in the form of jewelry such as rings and earrings as well as in the form of clothing or gloves. There are also more than 4000 mobile phone applications that can use health data.

The above was mentioned by the cardiologist specialist in arrhythmias at the University of Leipzig, Sotiris Nedios, speaking to APE-MPE, on the occasion of his speech on “The patient of the future: Sensors, wearables & m-health apps in arrhythmology” in the context of the Arrythmias Update conference 2023 organized by the 3rd Cardiology Clinic of AUTH.

As Mr. Nedios explains, in recent years there has been a renewal and a change in the health sector that will greatly benefit patients.

“We have a bunch of sensors that are now either inside the body or on the patient’s body and they provide us with a lot of data that helps us to prevent the deterioration of the patient’s health. This phenomenon is not new. We’ve known for a long time that pacemakers and defibrillators have various measurements, such as various indicators of how much fluid is in the patient’s lungs, what their rhythm is, whether they have arrhythmias or not, whether they are fast or slow. All this data has helped us in recent years to improve the treatment of patients. And now what we see are more implants and sensors that give us more information and wearables are used even more. There are devices that are placed on the wrist, devices that are placed on the index finger, devices that are inside the clothes we wear, e.g. on the gloves and which give us a lot of information such as heart rate, blood pressure or even devices that do electrocardiograms. These devices help us to prevent arrhythmias or to recognize them in time and start treatment, to prevent the worsening of the patient’s condition, to have a risk stratification and to know what the future risk is for the patient” adds Mr. Nedios.

At the same time, he notes that because the human mind can no longer manage such a large volume of data, there is a large contribution of artificial intelligence.

“We’re lucky to live in an age where we have a lot of data and at the same time we have all these devices interconnected and we have tremendous processing power. So we can and do use this data to help people. And of course this also changes the general context in which patients and people in general live because now this, in a way, goes beyond the traditional borders of medicine and comes closer to the patient. This is also the so-called mobile health, i.e. the health we take with us on our mobile which already collects a lot of information and based on this information can give us feed back on what we can do. There are many applications that even in healthy people promote exercise, promote memory exercises so they don’t get Alzheimer’s later, remind patients to take their medications, weigh themselves, measure their blood pressure, drink water, etc. All these will definitely improve health immensely. It is predicted that we will also have money savings. In the past, we had the problem that patients would stay at home until their condition got so bad that it could not go any further. Now the patient has the ability to be monitored at all times, to have a continuous flow of information which allows us to make small adjustments before things get that much worse and thus avoid hospitalizations or particularly critical situations” adds Mr. Nedios.

The cardiologist scientific associate of the C Cardiology Clinic of AUTH and head of the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Prevention and Digital Cardiology of the same Clinic, Konstantinos Bakoyannis, speaking to APE-MPE pointed out that in the future there will be new smarter devices as the algorithms of artificial intelligence accept more data, they train and become more efficient.

“This means that on the one hand the work of doctors becomes easier and on the other hand more patients benefit because such an algorithm can more easily recognize the signs that are dangerous for the patient, to “ring the bell” that the person is in danger or to say whether the medicine he is taking benefits him. And there we are now talking about precision medicine, personalized medicine” notes . Bakoyannis.

Speaking about the digital platforms in the daily life of the clinician, Mr. Bakoyannis, states that we can imagine them as a platform on which various types of information are connected.

“The basic information we usually have comes from the patients’ medical history as well as, if it is a Clinic, the data available from his hospitalization, from previous hospitalizations, previous diseases and also his medications. At the same time, over time and with the development of digital technology, other types of functions are adapted to digital platforms, such as remote monitoring, such as data from smart devices, data from health applications, data from smart watches, but also other devices such as sensors etc. I think that in recent years and due to the Covid pandemic and due to the lockdown, the need for telemonitoring has emerged very strongly» adds Mr. Bakoyiannis.

“What the cardiology of the future holds for us is what we call “all in one platform” where we will have beyond medical data and cost data as well as other data. For example, we have a patient who has atrial fibrillation, what does it cost the patient, what does it cost the hospital and the state, and it may also give us the opportunity to improve» notes Mr. Bakoyiannis.