Monitor Your Heart Rate with Your iPhone

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports on a new unapproved Apple iPhone application that will “monitor your heart rate via the built-in microphone (through either the onboard mic on the iPhone or through the mic/headset combo).”

In addition to monitoring your heart rate using the microphone, the application enables users to count beats per minute (using the voice prompts) and store the heart rate data for later reference.

Go here to watch a brief video of the application in action.

But will it work for patients with cardiac conditions who need to regularly monitor their heart rate? One of our favorite cardiology bloggers, Dr. Wes, says not so fast. The good Dr. notes that “While this is likely to work fine with regular heart rhythms, irregular rhythms like atrial fibrillation will be under-sensed giving falsely low rates because shorter ventricular filling times will cause decreased ejection of blood and hence, decreased sound in the neck area.”

Several sources online (including this one) claim that the application is currently available for download from the iTunes store for the low, low price of $4.99.

What say you doctors? Is this another winner for the iPhone?