Unique heart search with app for all Dutch people

There are already many ways to monitor your health with apps or software on your smartwatch or smartphone. For example, it’s easy to set up a pedometer, get nutritional advice, track your sleep pattern, or get detailed sleep pattern information with an app. They are already there suitable pieces who warn of impending cardiac arrest or who, even before there are reports, warn of an impending arrest cardiac arrest.

Extensive cardiac examination

All of these examples are about self-monitoring, which of course can also be used to help science take a step forward. With the new “My Heart Matters” app, people do both: learn more about their health and participate in an extensive heart study. The app was created by researchers from Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) and the National eHealth Living Lab (NeLL). What is unique is that patients at specific risk cannot participate in this, but all residents over the age of 18 can participate, simply by downloading the app on their mobile.

My Heart Matters is a smart app

General practitioner Tobias Bonten explains the principle of heart examination very visually on the website van LUMC: “It’s like putting questionnaires on all kitchen tables in the Netherlands and attaching a motion sensor to random passers-by. In this way we can intelligently research the relationship between exercise, lifestyle and cardiovascular disease ”. For example, it is investigating whether it affects the risk of cardiovascular disease at what time of day people exercise. For example, is it useful to get the body moving in the morning or doesn’t it matter?

Calculate your heart age

Anyone over 18 can put the app on their phone. The app itself details how search works, how privacy is organized, and what happens to the data. The app will keep track of how active participants are and how much they sleep. Participants are asked to complete short lifestyle questionnaires for one week. This affects healthy exercise, work, eating patterns and sleep patterns. Then the so-called heart age of the participant is calculated. This test was made by the Dutch Heart Foundation and translates risk factors into an estimate of a person’s heart age. The researchers want to use the data to find out how exercise and lifestyle affect cardiovascular disease in the general population. The researchers expect the first results in early 2023. Those who want to participate can download the app directly in the the App Store but not yet in the Play Store.