The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will be using local company VivaLNK’s continuous wearable ECG sensor for a 3000 subject multi-year study on atrial fibrillation (AF).

Spanning up to ten years, the study aims to detect biomarkers of early atrial transformation in AF.

AF is one of the most common abnormal heart rhythms, and a major cause of stroke and heart failure. However, due to a lack of methods to identify at-risk patients, current methods for treatment involve waiting until patients develop arrhythmia. One of the key challenges is the lack of simple and cost effective methods for monitoring over an extended and continuous period of time.

Subjects in the study will be monitored using the VivaLNK wearable ECG sensor, which can capture ECG and heart rate on a continuous basis 24 hours a day. Each subject will wear the ECG sensor for about one week every month, even while ambulatory or at home. Data from the sensor will then be captured through a mobile app and sent to the cloud for analysis.

“We hope to identify imaging, serum and digital biomarkers of AF risk and progression in this study,” said Jeffrey Olgin, principal investigator of the project at UCSF. “The capabilities of the VivaLNK ECG sensor will enable us to capture a larger continuous dataset in order to help achieve our goals.”

In addition to capturing ECG rhythm and heart rate, the sensor can also derive respiratory rate and offer accelerometer data. The same sensor is used in other applications and studies, such as in-hospital patient monitoring, remote patient monitoring, heart failure event detection and chemo treatment event detection.

VivaLNK’s portfolio includes wearable medical grade devices and data analytics applications that continuously monitor the health and well-being of individuals. The company’s vision is to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare worldwide by combining technology, data and analytics.