About a week ago we received a small heart monitor called MOCAheart that’s intended to allow people to easily monitor their cardiac health. We took it for a spin to evaluate its capabilities and to see whether the MOCAheart can really do what its developers claim it can.
The curious looking widget is only a couple inches long, quite thin, and weighs nearly nothing. It has a shiny metal front and a white plastic back and it’s small enough to throw in your pocket and take along throughout the day.
The device is really a heart rate monitor and a pulse oximeter in a convenient little package. The MOCAheart easily pairs with a matching app running on a tablet or smartphone via Bluetooth (iOS for now with Android version coming soon). Once complete, the device is ready to do its thing. Pressing the only button on the MOCAheart activates it and a red LED lights up. You simply grab the device with your fingers so that the thumb of one hand covers the light while the other thumb is kept pressed against the flat metal part.
The app recognizes when the device is activated and that readings are being captured. When this is happening, the app displays a countdown timer that makes sure you complete the entire reading from which the average heartbeat and blood oxygen saturation is measured.
Once complete, the app displays the results, which are essentially the heart rate and blood oxygenation, as well as the “MOCA INDEX.” This index is a combination of the two readings the device computes, essentially telling you if you’re OK or that something is not quite right (this proprietary index is somewhat a mystery to us).
In reality, most healthy people register blood oxygenation readings close to 100%. Those that fall considerably below probably know already that they have poor oxygenation. Moreover, they should probably be getting their advice from a cardiologist or pulmonologist, making the readings provided by the MOCAheart questionable in terms of their practical benefit.
Nevertheless, smokers, people that decide to start a grueling exercise regimen, and some others may surely benefit from the data the MOCAheart provides. Considering how easy it is to operate the device and its small size, it may certainly be useful for a variety of common applications.
Here’s a video presenting the MOCAheart:
Product page: MOCAheart…