Smart Wearables for the Detection of Cardiovascular Diseases: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Background: The advancement of information and communication technologies and the growing power of artificial intelligence are successfully transforming a number of concepts that are important to our daily lives. Many sectors, including education, healthcare, industry, and others, are benefiting greatly from the use of such resources. The healthcare sector, for example, was an early adopter of smart wearables, which primarily serve as diagnostic tools. In this context, smart wearables have demonstrated their effectiveness in detecting and predicting cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of death worldwide. Objective: In this study, a systematic literature review of smart wearable applications for cardiovascular disease detection and prediction is presented. After conducting the required search, the documents that met the criteria were analyzed to extract key criteria such as the publication year, vital signs recorded, diseases studied, hardware used, smart models used, datasets used, and performance metrics. Methods: This study followed the PRISMA guidelines by searching IEEE, PubMed, and Scopus for publications published between 2010 and 2022. Once records were located, they were reviewed to determine which ones should be included in the analysis. Finally, the analysis was completed, and the relevant data were included in the review along with the relevant articles. Results: As a result of the comprehensive search procedures, 87 papers were deemed relevant for further review. In addition, the results are discussed to evaluate the development and use of smart wearable devices for cardiovascular disease management, and the results demonstrate the high efficiency of such wearable devices. Conclusions: The results clearly show that interest in this topic has increased. Although the results show that smart wearables are quite accurate in detecting, predicting, and even treating cardiovascular disease, further research is needed to improve their use.

Keywords: body sensor networks; cardiovascular diseases; machine learning; sensors; smart health; smart wearables; wide body area networks.

Figure 1

Increase in number of patients and deaths due to CVDs.

Figure 2

Set of commonly known wearables.

Figure 3

Flow of information through the different phases of a systematic review.

Figure 4

Distribution of studies per year.

Figure 5

Diseases distribution per studies.

Figure 6

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning relation.

Figure 7

Training datasets in use.

Figure 8

Federated machine learning classical structure.

Figure 9

Data fusion different approaches.

Figure 10

Research questions arising from analysing usage of wearables in CVDs detection.

Figure 11

Research topics that may serve as solutions to the challenges in the domain.

Figure 12

Challenges–future solutions chart.