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Digital health solutions in the screening of subclinical atrial fibrillation

Digitale Lösungen für die Früherkennung von asymptomatischem Vorhofflimmern

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Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AF) will become one of the biggest challenges in cardiovascular medicine in the near future. Attempting an improvement in future patient care calls explicitly for the screening of subclinical AF. Digital health solutions implementing communication technologies for the collection and analysis of digitally assessable data will most likely serve this need. Several new rapidly developing methods were introduced in the past decade. Although the vast majority still require scientific validation, the body of evidence is growing and several randomized controlled trials are planned. This review aims to give an overview of current technologies with a specific focus on mobile health (mHealth) and appraise their value with regard to the available scientific data.

Zusammenfassung

Vorhofflimmern (VHF) wird in absehbarer Zeit zu einer der größten Herausforderungen in der kardiovaskulären Medizin werden. Der Versuch einer Verbesserung der künftigen Patientenversorgung verlangt insbesondere nach einer besseren Früherkennung von subklinischem VHF. Digitale Gesundheitslösungen, die moderne Kommunikationstechnologien zur Sammlung und Analyse von Daten einsetzen, werden bei der Lösung dieses Problems eine maßgebliche Rolle spielen. In der letzten Dekade wurden bereits einige sich schnell weiterentwickelnde Technologien vorgestellt. Wenngleich die Mehrheit weiterhin einer externen Validierung bedarf, wächst die Zahl wissenschaftlicher Publikationen stetig; zudem sind einige randomisierte, kontrollierte Studien in Planung. Dieser Übersichtsartikel soll einen Überblick über aktuell verfügbare digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen mit besonderem Fokus auf sog. „mobile health“(mHealth)-Lösungen geben und deren Nutzen vor dem Hintergrund der verfügbaren Studiendaten bewerten.

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  1. Department of Electrophysiology, Heart Center Leipzig at University of Leipzig, Strümpellstraße 39, 04289, Leipzig, Germany

    Sebastian König MD, Andreas Bollmann MD PhD & Gerhard Hindricks MD

  2. Leipzig Heart Institute, Leipzig, Germany

    Sebastian König MD, Andreas Bollmann MD PhD & Gerhard Hindricks MD

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S. König, A. Bollmann, and G. Hindricks declare that they have no competing interests.

For this article no studies with human participants or animals were performed by any of the authors. All studies performed were in accordance with the ethical standards indicated in each case.

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König, S., Bollmann, A. & Hindricks, G. Digital health solutions in the screening of subclinical atrial fibrillation. Herz 46, 329–335 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00059-021-05041-2

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