Increasing confidence and user engagement with confirmatory measurements

Episodes of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation can vary widely in frequency and duration, which makes it harder to detect this heart rhythm disorder. Due to the accessibility of FibriCheck, users can perform measurements regularly, which increases the chance to detect (a)symptomatic paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in new patients, and can support the management of recurrence in previously diagnosed AF patients.

The confirmatory measurements feature is an approach that is easy to implement and which provides an increased amount of data, ultimately leading to more confidence for clinical decision making as well as higher user engagement and awareness surrounding AF.

Detecting paroxysmal atrial fibrillation can be challenging, as the episodes of this heart rhythm disorder may come and go and can be very short in duration. When a user hasn’t performed a sufficient amount of measurements, then it’s harder to interpret this data and make clinical decisions. When there has only been one measurement which recorded AF as seen in the figure below, it makes it difficult to be confident in changing the patient’s care plan.

example of a traditional approach

In order to improve the detection yield of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and to help patients objectify their symptoms, we created the confirmatory measurements approach, which consisted of requesting users to perform a confirmatory measurement in the case of a potential finding. We did so by sending an automated in-app message immediately after the first urgent measurement.

Before this approach, 47.8% of users performed a confirmatory measurement within 15 minutes in case of a possible irregular measurement. When sending an in-app message, this number increased to 85%, allowing us to retrieve a significantly higher amount of relevant data. These confirmatory measurements allow us to increase the confidence in our findings, which helps with clinical decision-making.

example of an approach using confirmatory measurements

With these in-app messages, we saw that users were actively engaged and that they were likely to perform at least one confirmatory measurement within 15 minutes of receiving the message. As users receive these tailored messages, they are more aware that it is important to perform additional measurements when having a possible irregularity. This empowers users to be more informed on their heart health.

Through this accessible approach, we can offer a significant amount of information that can help with longitudinal insights. These additional measurements can help healthcare providers be more confident in their decision on whether or not an intervention or changes to the treatment plan of the patient are needed.