Researchers at the Rockyview General Hospital believe the human heart provides valuable data when it comes to predicting oncoming illness and the information could help reduce the frequency of post-surgery complications.

Dr. David Leipert, the hospital’s director of perioperative medicine, says a lack of variability in a heart rate is an indicator of medical stress.

“When you’re healthy, your heart rate is always going up and down all the time in response to your life, in response to your body, in response to what you’re doing at the time,” said Dr. Liepert, the lead investigator of the study. “The sicker you get, the less your heart rate varies because it becomes rigid, it becomes fixed, it becomes focused on dealing with the sickness.”

Liepert says a racing heart rate or a relatively slow heart rate do not necessarily indicate impending issues, it’s the lack of fluctuation in time between beats, no matter the measure beats per minute, that bring cause for concern.

The idea of utilizing heart rate variability (HRV) data as a predictor of illness came to Liepert following the floods of 2013. After assisting with flood relief, Liepert says he contracted a ‘nasty cardiac virus’ which damaged his heart. Prior to the diagnosis, he had detected a change in his heart rate.

“I knew something was going on because I have always had a very variable heart rate. It goes up when I breathe in and it goes down when I breathe out and that’s normal.”

Acting on his hunch, Liepert approached Biotricity, a medical technology firm, and the organization developed a monitor that samples a heart rate 1,000 times in a second.

“From beat to beat, the distance between the beats gives you a different heart rate for every single heartbeat. Heart rate variability is monitoring those miniscule differences in the length of time between individual beats to actually give you, what we call, the instantaneous heart rate.”

“If you’re not resolving on the millisecond level, you’re not going to be able to pick up the same resolution of data.”

Fetal heart rate monitoring has become commonplace over the last half century resulting in lower fetal and maternal mortality rates as medical practitioners have been able to intervene should trouble arise inside the uterus.

Liepert says his research team intends to develop a perioperative wellness monitor that will follow a patient from pre-surgery, through the procedure, and throughout the recovery process.

“The important thing is the 30 days after surgery,” said Liepert. “Monitoring your return to full wellness, getting back to normal activity, and getting back to normal life.“

The research team believes the monitor could result in a reduction of post-surgery complications including wound infections and blood clots.

Doctor Anthony Cook, a colleague of Liepert’s, agreed to wear the monitor for a length of time as a test subject.

“It actually becomes like wearing a watch,” explained Cook, one of the study's 20 test subjects. “You put it on in the morning and you leave it on all day.”

Cook says the device could result in a change of approach for the medical industry.

“So much of our health care time and effort is reactive instead of proactive. Reacting to illness to disease to trauma,” said Cook. “This is the first of its kind where you can potentially see a benefit or an indication of illness before it actually happens.”

The heart provides an overwhelming amount of information to researchers and Liepert hopes the team will be able to identify which data points contribute in order to develop a monitor with a simple red light/green light interface.

Liepert hopes the monitor will be readily available within the next three years.