Health monitoring and therapy firm OMRON Healthcare has launched OMRON Complete, its first single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) and blood pressure (BP) monitor for home use.
Designed for detection of atrial fibrillation (AFib) – the most frequently encountered arrhythmia in clinically practice – OMRON Complete incorporates clinically validated ECG technology that can be used simultaneously with the usual BP check, which could potentially decrease consultation time and unnecessary appointments, in a context of high demand for healthcare services.
Because high blood pressure has been confirmed by the medical guidelines as a risk factor in nearly 60% of the AFib cases, leading medical guidelines explicitly recommend opportunistic AFib screening in hypertensive patients and systematic screening of all individuals over the age of 75. This evidence proves that widespread adoption of home blood pressure monitoring technology enhanced with ECG capabilities would enable people and clinicians alike to detect the presence of AFib and to keep this risk factor for stroke under control once a proper diagnosis has been conducted.
Lucia Prada, marketing director of OMRON Healthcare Europe, said: “We developed Complete to make identifying a leading cause of strokes more accessible and routine. AFib can show no symptoms and may not be present during doctors’ visits because the episodes come and go, which means it’s often left undiagnosed. That is why we saw the need to get ECGs into the home, where regular readings can be taken by at-risk patients and shared with GPs to increase these odds alongside their usual blood pressure readings, without any additional inconvenience.”
André van Gils, global senior general manager at OMRON Healthcare, added: “It’s all about building a more complete picture of cardiovascular health. In providing practitioners with far more comprehensive data sets for chronic diseases such as AFib and hypertension, managing and preventing serious incidents becomes a lot more achievable. Technology like this has the power to save lives while enabling practitioners to deliver more personalised care and represents a concrete step forward in our zero cardiovascular events vision.”
OMRON Complete comprises an arm cuff and a blood pressure monitoring unit equipped with a smartphone docking station, two top electrodes and two side electrodes used to place the thumbs and fingers for taking the ECG readings. After pairing the OMRON connect app to the device and opening the app, the blood pressure and ECG readings (>30 sec) will be displayed on the smartphone screen, including a message of whether AFib is detected or not along with further, more detailed information. This data is automatically recorded and can be shared with GPs to provide comprehensive records of ECG and BP readings.
