AliveCor Smartphone App Detects Atrial fibrillation: Potential for Stroke Prevention

Atrial fibrillation (AF)  is a common abnormal rhythm of the heart which causes 1 in 4 strokes. Those afflicted with AF may lack any symptoms or only have a vague sense of irregularity of their heartbeat and thus the first symptom of AF can be stroke.

The gold standard for diagnosing AF has long been the electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) and typically the ECG involves placing 12 electrodes on the chest/arm/legs and recording the electrical activity of the heart on an expensive device.

I’ve been checking out a device made by Alive Cor which works with your smart phone to record a single channel ECG and is capable of accurately diagnosing if you are in the normal (sinus) rhythm or in AF.
Screen Shot 2015-07-12 at 8.45.49 AMYou can purchase the third generation (significantly smaller then earlier versions) AliveCor Mobile ECG from Amazon or from AliveCor directly for 74.99$ and it works with an app with both iOS and Android devices.

I used mine with my iPhone 6. At first I carried it separately, fearing the added bulk when stuck on to my iPhone case but after a while I realized that it was never with me when I wanted to use it and that there was a huge risk of losing it and so I used the backing adhesive to attach it to my case.

After pairing the device with the app you put two fingers on each of the metal pads and the smartphone screen displays the recording. After 30 seconds of recording it then interprets the rhythm.

Screen Shot 2015-07-12 at 8.56.47 AM
Typical recording in normal sinus rhythm. The red arrow indicates the small p waves which are the electrical signal of the upper chambers (the atria) depolarizing , the blue arrow indicates the electrical depolarization of the ventricles (QRS). The orange arrow indicates that the time interval between the QRS complexes is the nearly the same for each beat, indicating the regularity that we expect when in NSR compared to AF.

Above is a typical recording I made in my office on a patient who had a history of AF. The quality is good and I can clearly see that he is in normal sinus rhythm. The app correctly made the diagnosis of NSR and calculated his heart rate at 68 beats per minute.

One day I had most of my patients record their ECG’s using AliveCor and compared it to the standard 12-lead ECG we normally record. The device correctly identified the two patients with AF out of this group and correctly identified the normals.

Screen Shot 2015-07-12 at 9.26.42 AM
AliveCor recording of patient with AF with heart rate of 70 beats per minute. Note the absence of p waves before the QRS complexes and note the beat to beat variation in the RR interval (orange arrow)

This recording is from a patient with persistent AF which had recurred two weeks earlier. The device correctly identified AF.

Studies have documented that AliveCor Mobile ECG can accurately diagnose AF in a screening setting and the FDA approved the device for AF screening in 2014.

Given the high prevalence of silent AF, the strong association of AF with stroke and the availability of anticoagulants which reduce AF associated stroke by 70%, screening for AF with devices like AliveCor holds the promise of preventing large numbers of stroke.

(For my comments on taking the pulse and stroke prevention see here and on the inadvisability of a routine 12-lead ECG see here)

AliveCor allows physicians utilizing the Mobile APP and ECG to have a “dashboard” into which their patients can transmit their AliveCor ECG recordings.

I will be discussing this remarkable new device with my AF patients  who are smartphone enabled. I think it will advance our ability to more efficiently and quickly diagnose AF in them.

My standard approach if a patient with AF calls and says that they feel like they are out of rhythm is to have them come into the office for a full 12-lead ECG. If they are AliveCor enabled, they could make their own recording, and we could review that remotely and make a diagnosis without the office visit.

Let me know your thoughts on smartphone ECGs.

fibrillatorily yours,


9 thoughts on “AliveCor Smartphone App Detects Atrial fibrillation: Potential for Stroke Prevention”

  1. You tried this device on me at my last appt. with you. It worked easily and accurate. I will be getting one for myself to keep track of my AF. Thanks for the update

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