Fast and fatal.
That’s how Boris Golosarsky, an
internist from New Hampshire, views the symptoms related to heart-rate
variability. Even a seasoned marathoner with an iron constitution can suffer a
heart attack out of the blue if there are discrepancies in the timing of the heart.
Golosarsky estimates about
400,000 heart attacks every year in the United States can be tied back to
heart-rate variability. But his hypothesis hasn’t received widespread support
in the medical community. That’s why he’s spent years developing a patent for a
heart-rate variability watch that can track any adverse changes to the heart’s
rhythm.
Golosarsky’s practice is close
to Boston, a city densely packed with some of the finest higher education
institutions in the country. He considered soliciting help from one of the
local colleges to produce a prototype watch to bring to market. But when he
wanted results, he didn’t bother with any of the prestigious schools in his
backyard. He turned to the University of North Florida — and gained a plethora
of resources and like-minded thinking. “Not everyone thinks the way I do in the
medical field,” said Golosarsky, a physician with decades of experience in both
America and Russia. “So I’m trying to help them see what I see. UNF helped me
do that.”
Golosarsky handed over his prized
research to a trio of UNF electrical engineering students who spent the better
part of the last fall semester creating a heart-rate variability watch based on
the doctor’s patent — all on a budget of a couple hundred dollars. Seniors
Kevin Nguyen and Evan Stanley and junior John Gonzalez spent dozens of class
hours fine tuning the watch’s design and functionality. It uses nine
different formulas derived from Golosarsky’s research and measures a user’s
natural heart rhythm via a chest strap transmitter synced to the watches
receiver and remotely sets off an alarm for a patient’s care provider or the
paramedics if it strays outside the comfort zones. It also allows users to sync
their cell phones to make emergency calls or send text messages to chosen
physicians in case of heart-rate turbulence. “It’s some pretty interesting
stuff,” Nguyen said. “Most students don’t think they’ll be working on a class
project that one day could be manufactured to help people. It’s kind of crazy
if you think about it.”
Heart-Rate
Variability importance
The watch sprung from the mind
of Golosarsky, who devoted decades to studying the startling phenomenon of
heart-rate variability contributing to unexpected heart attacks. Golosarsky
said most medical experts and casual adherents to healthy living believe that
plaque in the arteries and cholesterol are the most pressing heart-related
concerns.
They’re partly right. He said a
number of heart attacks happen in perfectly health hearts because of
ventricular fibrillation, or a disconnect between the electrical and mechanical
functions of the heart. He said a sudden abnormal heart rhythm, also known as
an arrhythmia, could be fatal if left untreated for more than a few minutes. The
more variability, the greater the likelihood of death.
“It’s the result of instability
in the heart, and the heart is a machine, like anything else,” Golosarsky said.
“It’s like in a car. You can have the perfect engine, but if there’s an issue
with the gas and brake pedal and the timing is wrong, it will break down like
anything else.”
Golosarsky started focusing on
heart-rate variability in the mid-’80s while he was still living in the USSR,
now Russia. He reviewed dozens of cases involving
sudden cardiac deaths and realized that cholesterol was only an ancillary issue
for most of the deaths. It
clicked for him when he started reading stress-assessment tests that were
performed on cosmonauts in the mid-’60s. The candidates who had the greatest
swings in heart-rate variability were most likely to suffer catastrophic cardiac
events. “HRV (heart-rate
variability) is not just an approach to see how the heart works, it’s a measure
of how the entire parasympathetic and sympathetic systems act,” he said. “It
speaks to the whole body, and you can make assumptions about the whole body's
well being based on the HRV.”
Golosarsky’s
focus on bringing heart-rate variability to the forefront of the national
cardiac health conversation has been driving him for the past two decades. He
came up with patents and a rough prototype of a device that could track variability,
but he wanted to find a way to alert paramedics if a myocardial infarction was
imminent. The only thing missing was some additional design and functionality
help. That’s what brought him to Colorado, and that’s what put him on UNF’s
radar.
An
Education Connection
Dr. Gerry Merckel, an associate dean and professor in UNF’s College of
Computing, Engineering and Construction, has attended multiple conferences for
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He expected the June 2010
conference in Colorado to be much the same — lots of speeches, some networking
and a few banquet-style dinners. And then he heard Golosarsky’s distinctive voice
slice through the conference crowd.
Merckel said he only had to
listen to a few seconds of the Russian doctor’s presentation to realize his passion
for his work was contagious. The internist regaled the conference crowd with
his life’s research and Merckel was captivated by the other man’s dedication to
his craft. And when he heard about the untapped potential tied to heart-rate
variability, he immediately started brainstorming ways to transfer that over to
UNF. “It seemed like something way outside of the norm,” Merckel said. “Most of
the discussions I had heard during the conference were pretty dry for someone
like me, who was looking for a way to relate some of it back to college
students,” he said. “But Boris [Golosarsky] cut through that.”
Merckel said he approached
Golosarsky after the conference with a deal. His students would make the heart-rate
variability watch with Bluetooth functionality, completely free-of-charge. All the
doctor needed to do was allow them to work off his patent. Golosarsky was
initially taken aback. “I didn’t think colleges did anything like this for free,”
Golosarsky said. “But there was Dr. Merckel, offering up his college’s
services. I didn’t expect anything like that to happen.”
The UNF partnership was an
unexpected turn and Golosarsky willingly handed over his patent and research.
The result, he said, speaks for itself. “I needed just a little help, not
much,” he said. “I needed someone who could help in the manufacturing. And they
did it.”
Replicating
the Work World
Dr. Il-Seop Shin, an electrical
engineering professor and project advisor, said neither the students nor the University
received compensation for the project. It was solely for class credit and to
prepare the students for the real-world rigors of working with a business
client. “The product development experience is the reward for them,” he said.
Shin, a visiting professor from
the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said it was quite the coup for UNF to
get to work on a project with a potentially national profile like the
heart-rate variability watch. The University has been strategically building up
its research and manufacturing portfolio with the Connect Program.
It is a new internship-like
initiative by the College of
Computing, Engineering and Construction that transforms UNF students
into a development team working at the request of business professionals. It’s
a major student resume booster, Shin said. And it gets them ready for dealing
with collaborative work environments when they graduate.
Another team of Connect Program
students produced an inexpensive debate timer for a political party
representative late last year. “This program is a good example of what UNF does
well,” Shin said. “The students were able to devote their time to it, and I
could be there to advise if they ran into any problems. It’s a very hands-on,
collaborative environment here, and that helps in making a better product.”
Hands-on
Learning
Gonzalez, the student who
handled project manager duty throughout much of the design process, said the
watch operates as a first-alert system for heart patients, but the technology
can be used to establish a baseline heart rate or perform other basic
heart-related measurements. The students modified the Golosarsky algorithms so
they could enter them into a programmable Texas Instruments watch along with a
Bluetooth receiver to transmit emergency signals to paramedics or contact the
patient’s doctor if heart-rate variability swings into a dangerous zone. And it’s
not the first of its kind to offer up these measurements. Many different
watches measure heart rhythms, and a few others track variability. The
difference comes in the watch’s ability to communicate with paramedics or
medical professionals in the case of a cardiac event.
Nguyen toiled over the watch’s
functionality for weeks. He whittled the watch’s stock features down to the
bare essentials and plugged in Golosarsky’s formulas. It was tedious work at
first making sure the receiver picked up the correct measurements and
transmitted them back properly. But the work was validated when they tested the
watch and it ran to perfection. “It was a good feeling to see it send that
emergency alert out,” he said. “If that were on the market, it would be able to
maybe save someone’s life in that situation.”
Stanley echoed his colleague’s
sentiments. “It doesn’t even matter if Dr. Golosarsky sells it in the future,”
he said. “I just enjoyed knowing that something I worked on in college could
help people later on down the road.”
Looking
Forward
The students’ work culminated
in early February with a visit from Golosarsky. The internist had been in
constant communication with his college production crew, and he flew down for a
final in-person inspection. “He got to see
his research in a physical form, so he seemed very enthusiastic,” Stanley said.
“That made working on it more meaningful for me, especially getting to the idea
that it wasn’t just academic. He talked to us about how he wanted to use it in
the real world. That was a pretty big deal.”
Golosarsky
said he envisions having an HRV monitor for every hospital patient —not just those
with high-risk heart problems. The only issue is convenience. Most patients
wouldn’t be happy wearing a chest strap or a watch everywhere they go.
In time,
the technology will grow smaller and more feasible for more patients. And Golosarsky
said he hopes his focus on heart-rate variably in the medical community will gain
more support.
The
project definitely changed the perceptions of the student development team. “The
work made me start looking at places that I hadn't considered before,” Stanley
said. “I hadn’t thought of medical engineering as a field where I could get a
job and still do the work I wanted. The possibility of being an electrical
engineer for a field other than distribution or computing — the thought didn’t
really cross my mind. But now I know, I can get into other fields with my
experience.”
Nguyen said the project has a
prominent position on his resume.
“It’s nice to have something
like this under my belt where I did programming, designing and the paperwork
that goes along with that,” he said. “It hopefully shows that we can do the
work in a corporate environment after we graduate.
A
Seal of Approval
The next step for the watch
isn’t quite clear, Golosarsky said. But he said he would like to find a way to
manufacture the prototype and get it into hospitals and medical offices as soon
as possible. And he credits the trio of UNF students for their work in making
his patent come to life. “They are really bright guys, really sharp college
students,” Golosarsky said.
And he would know. His office
is based near Boston proper, which is loaded with renowned research institutes.
“I’d put UNF up against any of them,” Golosarsky said. “I don’t think I could
go into Harvard and have them do the quality of work in the amount of time I
needed it that the UNF students did. The school, the students and my
experience, were top-notch.”
