An unprecedented study of the health status of diverse patient populations-ScienceDaily

Wearable health devices such as the popular Apple Watch have changed the game, giving clinicians a more complete picture of everyday life and revealing meaningful data that brings health and illness to clinicians.

The initial results of a groundbreaking three-year observational study called MIPACT, which stands for Michigan’s predictive activity and clinical trajectory, are: Lancet Digital Health..

Dr. Jessica Gorbus, MD, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Michigan, said: Research collaborator.

The University of Michigan Health Survey was launched in 2018 in collaboration with Apple, led by Sachin Kheterpal MD, Vice Dean of Research and Information Technology and Professor of Anesthesiology. This study aims to enroll diverse participants across different ages, races, ethnicities, and underlying health conditions.

Golbus states that one of the greatest successes of the study to date has been the ability to hire from groups that are largely underestimated or underestimated in digital health surveys. For example, 18% of the more than 6,700 participants were 65 years of age or older, 17% were black, and 17% were Asian.

Ten percent of the participants had diabetes and one-third had high blood pressure. More than a quarter of the participants reported depression. Summary data from MIPACT surveys for all participants is available in a web-based survey tool developed by survey investigators.

“With this tool, researchers and participants select specific clinical and demographic criteria (age, weight index, gender) and average as well as the number of participants in that cohort. You can see your resting heart rate, blood pressure, and other activities. Data. ” Nicole Erich, clinical research project manager for the study, said. “It provides researchers with more context in the form of normative data.”

This data can make a big difference for clinicians.

“As a cardiologist who cares for patients dealing with heart failure, it is important in our study that more than 200 patients have heart failure. Understanding what their baseline information looks like is important. An assessment of the patient’s level of activity in daily life, which is really informative and can be started with a more accurate estimate. “

This paper examines the first 90 days of the study and describes blood pressure, heart rate, activity data, and blood pressure measurements collected with the Omron Wireless Blood Pressure Cuff on your Apple Watch or iPhone.

Participants wore an Apple Watch for an average of 15.5 hours a day on almost 90% of study days. Overall, 1.1 million blood pressure and over 200 million heart rate measurements were collected through the research device.

Participants aged 65 and over had significantly lower resting and walking heart rates, with female resting heart rates averaging 3 beats per minute higher than males. When stratified by self-declared race, black participants had the highest heart rate and white participants had the lowest. The level of activity also depends on race, ethnicity, and the presence of certain clinical symptoms. Taken together, these differences indicate that patient-specific context is an important consideration when clinicians interpret wearable and home blood pressure data.

From a technical point of view, the study also revealed a significant discrepancy in activity levels measured by clock and telephone, the latter underestimating the number of steps.

“This means that not all mobile device signals are created the same, and in the future, interpretation of these signals will require knowledge of the device from which they were collected. I think it will be. “

Golbus adds that the final results of this study are clinically important to physicians.

“Quite often, patients ask us what the data on wearable devices mean, and it’s very difficult to understand the long-term health implications of patients,” Golbus said. .. She states that a three-year follow-up period is most beneficial as she seeks to contextualize the data signal from the Apple Watch using information from participants’ electronic medical records and survey data.

The data may also provide an unexpected ability to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Golbus said: “With data on both pre- and post-pandemic participants, we assess how physiological parameters changed during the pandemic process, not only as a result of the disease, but also due to global effects. It’s capable. Pandemics have influenced all our lifestyles. “