Elite-level athletes and professional sports teams are continually searching for opportunities to improve athletic performance and gain a competitive advantage on the field. Advances in technology have provided new avenues to maximize player health and safety. Over the last decade, time-motion analysis systems, such as video recording and computer digitization, have been used to measure human locomotion and improve sports performance. While these techniques were state of the art at the time, their usefulness is inhibited by the questionable validity of the acquired data, the labor-intensive nature of collecting data with manual hand-notation techniques, and their inability to track athlete position, movement, displacement, and velocity.

Background Wearable wrist-monitors offer an unobtrusive way to acquire heart rate data in an efficient manner. Previous work in this field has focused on studying healthy subjects during exercise but has yet to assess the efficacy of these devices in patients suffering from common cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation. Objective The objective of this pilot study was to assess the accuracy of the Apple Watch heart rate monitor in fifty patients experiencing atrial fibrillation compared to telemetry. Results Results from this pilot clinical study demonstrated a correlation coefficient of 0.7 between all readings on the Apple Watch and telemetry. Furthermore, the Apple Watch assessed heart rate more accurately in patients who were in atrial fibrillation than in those that were not (rc = 0.86, patients in AF, vs. rc = 0.64, patients not in AF). Clinical Impact The presented data from this pilot study suggests that caution should be noted before using the Apple Watch 4 wearable wrist monitor to monitor heart rate in patients with cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation.

Traditional measures of clinical status and physiology have generally been based in health care settings, episodic, short in duration, and performed at rest. Wearable biosensors provide an opportunity to obtain continuous non-invasive physiologic data from patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) in the real-world setting, over longer durations, and across varying levels of activity. However, there are significant technical limitations to the use of wearable biosensors in CHD. Here, we review current applications of wearable biosensors in CHD; how clinical and research uses of wearable biosensors must consider various CHD physiologies; the technical challenges in developing wearable biosensors for CHD; and special considerations for digital biomarkers in CHD.

Rationale: Clinical testing of oxygen-conserving devices is not mandated before marketing. Consequently, little is known about individual or comparative therapeutic effectiveness. Objectives: To relate oxygen delivery from prototypical instruments to physiological performance. Methods: Thirteen subjects with obstructive lung disease performed progressive treadmill exercise while inhaling either room air, 2 L O2/min, or bolus oxygen from four commercially available conserving devices at regulator settings of 2, 5, and continuous. The devices were studied blindly in random order after first being tested to determine performance characteristics. Pulse oximetry, oxygen delivery, and nasal and oral ventilations were monitored at rest and with exertion. Measurements and Main Results: At a setting of 2 at rest, all conservers maintained saturation greater than 90%, but there were significant differences in oxygenation between systems. Only one equaled 2 L O2/min. With exertion, saturation decreased with all conservers but not with 2 L O2/min. One device did not perform any better than room air. Two systems provided less oxygen than predicted, one more, and in one the expected and actual amounts were equal only at rest. Breath-by-breath performance was highly variable, with irregular activation and inconsistent oxygen bolus size delivery. Increasing oxygen pulse volume to the point of eradicating conservation with the continuous setting did not eliminate all disparities. Conclusions: The mechanical and clinical performances of current oxygen conservers are highly variable and in some instances actually contribute to limitations in exercise ability. Seemingly equivalent technical features do not guarantee equivalent therapeutic functionality.

Wearable devices have garnered increased attention over the past years by the sports industry, military, and general public for everyday use. Technological advancements have enabled athletes, sports teams, soldiers, and physicians to track functional movements, workload, biometric and bio-vital markers to maximize performance and safety while minimizing the potential for injury or accidents. Wearable monitoring systems can provide continuous physiological data thus enabling accurate treatment plans and specific recovery programs. Herein, we present a review of the wearable sensors field in sports and emergency medicine and highlight our current work and collaborations which bridge academia, healthcare professionals, sports team physicians, Life Flight operations, and ED/trauma operations. A key outcome of this work is the identification of crosscutting themes that indicate critical path items for future research.

A pseudospectral numerical method is used for the solution of the Navier-Stokes and mass transport equations for a sphere in a sinusoidally oscillating flow with zero mean velocity. The flow is assumed laminar and axisymmetric about the sphere's polar axis. Oscillating flow results were obtained for Reynolds numbers (based on the amplitude of the free-stream velocity) between 1 and 150, and Strouhal numbers between 1 and 1000. Sherwood numbers were computed and their dependency on the flow frequency and amplitude discussed. An assessment of the validity of the quasi-steady assumption for mass transfer is based on these results.