AliveCor IPhone 4-4S Portable ECG

According to their website, AliveCor has just made their new portable IPhone ECG monitor available to patients with a prescription from their doctors.
Looks like a good, quick way to record your AF and other cardiac events so that your doctor can review them.

[shop.alivecor.com]

At my next end of Feb EP appointment, think I ask him for a prescription for one of these monitors. Looks like it would be more user friendly than my MedChoice handheld ECG.
I also use a Garmin Forerunner 405 but it is not very user friendly either.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/2013 10:57PM by RalphL.

Good news ... the I-phone 5 version is supposed to be out between April and June.. will hold off for that one.

Shannon

I just upgraded to an iPhone 5 too.

I have been following this product since it was first announced and started to have my brother, who is veterinarian, purchase one for me. Now that it is availble to the general public with a physician's prescription, I am going to purchase one as soon as the iPhone5 version is available. It will be great to be able to document irregular heart activity any time it occurs. At $200.00, I feel it is very reasonably priced.

Will the over provide protection too from being dropped or do we have to snap it on and off when not using it?

From their site:

"The Heart Monitor also uses AliveCor’s proprietary wireless communication protocol to communicate with the app, and requires no pairing between the iPhone and the Heart Monitor."

Since we aren't pros using this all day, I'm guessing it will work without actually snapping onto the phone, just need to be in proximity. I happen to like my Otterbox case for the protection it provides and would be reticent to give it up.

I'm also looking for an iPhone heart rate monitor & app to replace the functionality of my Polar. While you can "see" more with a real ECG like the AliveCor, the nice part about the Polar is longer term monitoring. You can distinguish many things such as PVC's, PAC's and afib. This is generally all I need to know. Also you can read a Polar by inspection vs having to look a lot harder at an ECG (I have a primitive ECG and it is a pain to interpret).

George

Both my regular cardiologist and the EP I have seen once refuse to write a script for this. The cardio guy could see no way to get reimbursed for interpreting any "charts" I send them. The EP cited liability concerns.

Anyone have any luck getting one of these?

Gary