Today we are answering a question that you often ask us through the mail and our social networks.

What is the difference between a stress test and the professional remote cardiology service we offer at IDOVEN?

They are two totally different and complementary services, we are going to go a little deeper into what each one offers and how they can be used to improve our performance and know the state of our heart:

• Measurement time and number of heartbeats:

Our Heart studies analyze the heartbeat continuously monitored for a minimum of 24 hours (perfect for finding out the state of your heart and playing sports without worrying) and up to 21 days (ideal for trying to find out the cause of certain heart symptoms such as dizziness, palpitations or chest pains). While a stress test takes about 8-20 minutes depending on the protocol used and the physical condition of the patient.

The number of heartbeats monitored for a person in a stress test in those 8-20 minutes is about 2000 beats. Traditionally, this has not been due to a biological or medical reason, but to a practical reason. When these tests are carried out at specific centres, longer monitoring would be very expensive because the medical-sports personnel have to be present and it would not be possible to attend to all the people who need it as there are only one or two ergometers per centre. 

The average number of heartbeats recorded and analysed by our medical-sports team is 1 million beats per person for a 7-10 day study .

Big Data consists of analyzing data sets so large and complex -in this case heartbeats- that they require non-traditional computer processing applications to treat them properly. Thus extracting value from this stored information and formulating predictions through the observed patterns. In IDOVEN our medical and engineering team is developing artificial intelligence algorithms that help doctors process all that information.

• Laboratory study and real life study:

The objective of IDOVEN is to monitor the real activity of any sportsman or woman who wants to know the state of their heart wherever they live.

We do not only monitor training or a specific effort, but we also monitor everything that happens in the heart of the athlete's day-to-day life (training anywhere, rest, work, social life...). In this way we can understand what happens in the sportsman's heart, how he recovers, what alterations he has (if any) and how his heart acts after different types of effort.

With IDOVEN you will be able to know at what heart rate you sleep, how fast or slow your heart recovers after effort or how it acts in a work situation with stress or lack of sleep. We monitor your whole day, not just a specific moment of it.

Stress tests are what is known in medicine as "laboratory studies. They are performed in a hospital or medical center with an ergometer (treadmill, cycloergometer, remoergometer, and other specific ergometers). There are various protocols that try to reproduce for a few minutes the effort made by that athlete or patient during training, competitions or their day-to-day life (for example when climbing stairs). On a treadmill, protocols are used in which the patient or athlete is asked to walk on a treadmill or run, and on a cycloergometer he is asked to exert himself on a stationary bicycle in which the load is increased in watts (power). Usually, in an exercise test protocol for athletes, the optimum is to look for maximum effort during the last 2 minutes of the test. This is usually achieved by increasing the speed and/or incline of the treadmill or the power of the cycloergometer. These protocols commonly used in stress tests are standard and difficult to adapt to the real characteristics of each sport, athlete or patient (for example: age, sex, physical condition, medical history, aerobic and strength components of the different types of training or sports). 

• Monitoring of all types of training:

With IDOVEN you can monitor all types of non-aquatic training and not just one-off training.

Stress tests monitor how your heart acts when it is put under incremental stress for 15 minutes but with IDOVEN you can monitor all types of workouts. From long runs of any length (cycling outings, long distance mountain training or specific resistance training) to shorter training sessions with a higher intensity (usual training in the city, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), series, slopes, strength training...). You will be able to find out how your heart works in all types of training and how it recovers after each effort.

• Recovery monitoring:

It is known by all athletes that recovery and rest is part of training and that our performance can be closely related to how we rest and how our heart recovers after effort.

With IDOVEN we can monitor what happens to our heart during the recovery process and nightly rest. This data will help us to know if the training we are doing is correct or if we are over-trained and our organism does not assimilate the training well.

Obviously with a stress test these data cannot be analyzed since usually in the doctor's office recovery after stress is monitored for 2-5 minutes. 

• Professional cardiology at home:

In order to carry out a stress test it is necessary to go to a hospital, medical-sports centre, sports centre or club.

With IDOVEN it is not necessary, we are the only company that facilitates professional remote cardiology. We send the monitoring kit to your home, the athlete or patient is monitored during the days you have contracted and we pick up the kit when it is finished. A few days later, the athlete or patient receives his or her medical report with the most relevant data on what is happening in his or her heart as well as professional advice to improve his or her performance and a simple explanation of the monitored data.

• Medical certificate of sports aptitude:

The final objective, or one of them, when carrying out an effort test is to obtain the medical certificate of sports aptitude that accredits that the athlete can carry out a specific sports test.

Both in the effort test and with our service, if no problem is found during monitoring, the athlete will obtain the certificate that certifies that he can make certain efforts since his heart responds positively to the stimuli submitted.

In summary, we could say that stress tests are valid if we want to know how our heart reacts to a specific effort in a controlled environment, but the data obtained is somewhat scarce if we want to know what happens in our heart in our real life.

And that's where our services come in, monitoring everything that happens in our hearts as we train, rest, work, eat... Not only do we offer a complete monitoring of our daily life, but we also offer it all over Europe without the athlete having to go to any medical center or sports center.

You can consult our services by clicking on the following links:

Professional remote cardiology for athletes.

Professional remote cardiology for patients.

Write to us and we will tell you how we can help you to practice sport or physical activity of any intensity with peace of mind: contact@idoven.ai