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YOUR HEALTH: Using your phone to monitor your pacemaker

New technology helps better monitor the health of people with Pacemakers

CLEVELAND — If you log onto your phone right now, what kind of information would you find? 

Your heartrate? 

How many steps you've taken? 

Or maybe you track how much sugar you eat? 

But what if you could also check, your pacemaker? 

Nearly three million people worldwide have implanted electronic devices that they've never been able to track themselves.

Millions of people need surgically implanted cardiac devices, like pacemakers, to keep them alive. close monitoring of these devices is critical.

"They say, 'Well, I know, doc, I know that you're receiving my data, but I have no idea whether this is truly happening or not'," said Dr. Khaldoun Tarakji, Associate Section Head of Cardiac Electrophysiology at Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Tarakji has found a way to put that power in your smartphone with the first of a kind app called MyCareLinkHeart.

"Other people have to have a monitor beside their bed to record it and they have to take it in, and have it read where mine can be read at any time," said Erma Mercer, a bradycardia patient.

Find out how it can help patients and caregivers.

"It outperformed all the existent technologies for remote monitoring," added Dr. Tarakji.

BlueTooth wireless telemetry and new-generation pacemakers transmit data from the heart, to a phone or tablet, then directly to the doctor.

"And we found that with this new technology, the success rate was high as 94.6%," explained Dr. Tarakji.

No matter where you are.

"I just feel so much safer and so much better" Emma said.

Medtronic's BlueSync technology employs low-energy Bluetooth wireless telemetry to allow patients to use their own smart device, whether a smartphone or a tablet, to directly monitor their new-generation pacemaker or biventricular pacemaker.

"We're all attached to these devices," said Dr. Tarakji, "and this is not just for the care of the patient of today, but this is also for the care of the patient of tomorrow."

While the MyCareLinkHeart app improves outcomes for patients over other traditional methods of monitoring, the biggest challenge has been access to a smart device.

To donate an old smartphone or tablet to someone in need consider logging on to sites like 1millionproject.org or medicmobile.org.

The technology uses end-to-end encryption to keep the pacemaker data secure. 

Itj can transfer pacemaker data to patient management networks, such as CareLink, without the use of a traditional bedside monitor.

If this story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Jim Mertens at jim.mertens@wqad.com or Marjorie Bekaert Thomas at mthomas@ivanhoe.com.

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