Making Sense of Data From Wearable Health Trackers
In the 1960s, biophysicist Norman J. “Jeff” Holter commercialized a portable electrocardiogram — now known as a Holter monitor — which allowed patients with heart palpitations, a condition known as syncope (a medical term for fainting), or other cardiac issues to be monitored outside the clinic. It was an early but consequential response to the understanding that our diagnostic devices suffer from sampling bias: An ECG taken during a short visit to the doctor is a snapshot and might not reveal cryptic heart arrythmias. Suddenly, healthcare was in a new era, moving towards a future in which monitoring could occur outside of the walls of a hospital, quietly surfacing findings which may not have been brought to light until the patient suffered a more morbid outcome. ….[READ]
