Wearable device monitors heart failure

A new study published in Circulation: Heart Failure shows how bioengineers are teaming up with clinicians to improve patient outcomes.

“The concept behind the device in this paper originated with a bioengineering graduate student as a side project,” says co-author Shuvo Roy, PhD. “And it subsequently led to a strong collaboration between my lab and UCSF cardiologists Drs. Liviu Klein and Teresa De Marco, illustrating nicely how bioengineers and clinicians come naturally together at UCSF to tackle significant problems in medicine.”

The research demonstrates a wearable device in the form of a patch that senses and transmits information on a patient’s cardiac condition during exercise. This kind of remote monitoring of patients with heart failure could allow clinicians to make adjustments to treatment that take into account a patient’s changing condition, and could potentially reduce hospitalizations.

The initial idea came from Mozziyar Etemadi, MD, PhD, when he was a PhD bioengineering student in the Roy Lab. Co-author J. Alex Heller, MS, was also an engineer in the Roy Lab. Roy is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

More about this research

• Wearable patch successfully assesses patients' heart failure status
• Novel wearable seismocardiography assesses cardiac response to exercise in HF