WiP Seminar: Jacob Hutton

Jacob Hutton
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Medicine, UBC
Graduate Research Assistant, CanSAVE
Paramedic, BC Emergency Health Services

 End of life studies to improve survival from cardiac arrest with consumer smartwatches

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) – when the heart stops beating – affects over 60,000 Canadians per year. Most cases are unwitnessed and receive treatment outside of the critical first 10-15 minutes after onset, leading to poor survival. Wearable devices have been proposed to notify first responders that a cardiac arrest has occurred. However, there are currently no systems that have been validated using real cardiac arrest data. We recruited individuals across Canada undergoing Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) procedures, as well as patients in hospice settings. Participants received a consumer grade wearable device that collected raw physiological data corresponding to blood volume changes, as well as movement data. We completed an interim analysis of the data to describe the cohort and assess the feasibility of using this data for algorithm development. Over 660 hours of data was collected from 64 individuals. The median days from enrollment to death in the hospice arm was 14 days (min: 1.5, max: 86). Detection of cardiac arrest using physiological data appeared promising. Trends in the lead up to death were apparent in the hospice arm, but more data is needed to fit sophisticated models for cardiac arrest prediction. Participants reported an interest in giving back and helping science as leading motivations for participation. Technology-based research in these populations is feasible and yielded useful data for algorithm development. Ongoing work is using this data to re-train foundational models for cardiac arrest detection. More data is needed to develop complex models for cardiac arrest prediction.

This is a virtual event. Please register below.