In keeping with the telemedicine and remote patient monitoring trend, AliveCor has announced KardiaCare which is a new service that helps patients monitor their hearts’ health at home. KardiaCare works with AliveCor’s consumer ECG devices: KardiaMobile and KardiaMobile 6L. These devices let patients record medical-grade ECGs; the new service helps them interpret their ECG data, track symptoms, and measure the impact of actions they take to improve cardiac health.
Health Tech Insider has covered AliveCor’s ECG technology since the company first received FDA clearance for KardiaMobile, a smartphone ECG accessory in 2014. Since we’ve covered the FDA clearance for KardiaMobile 6L, a consumer ECG device that records cardio-electrical activity from six separate points for advanced accuracy, and KardiaBand, designed for the Apple Watch. In 2015, the FDA also approved AliveCor’s analytical algorithms that provide users with insight into their ECG data.
KardiaCare is a subscription service that costs $9.99 a month or $99 per year. It includes digital tools such as ECG analysis, family sharing, a care plan task list, reminders, and a monthly health report. Every 90 days, subscribers automatically receive an evaluation of their ECG recording by a board-certified cardiologist. Patients with chronic conditions can monitor their own heart health and set up automatic sharing with their provider if desired.
Healthy individuals can use KardiaCare to track cardiac wellness, but they may not find the data any more useful than information obtained from other health trackers on the market. The people who stand to benefit the most from this service have chronic conditions that cause abnormal heart rhythms. Atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, and tachycardia often require medical intervention to avoid serious health complications. Tracking with KardiaCare could predict a dangerous change in heart rhythm. The system can also alert the user when an ECG recording shows signs of a heart rhythm event, so they can seek prompt medical attention.
Patients with chronic heart conditions have a higher risk of complications from COVID-19, so many choose to postpone routine healthcare visits. KardiaCare could potentially help reduce the chance of exposure for both patients and providers while providing convenient, user-friendly, high-level cardiac monitoring.
