Exploring Health Insights from Polar Vantage V3, Polar Verity Sense and Polar H10 Integration within the RADAR-base Platform

Abstract

The emergence of wearable technology has led to the emergence of the integrated data collection platform RADAR-base. The objective of this study was to assess the added value of three newly integrated Polar devices – the Polar Verity Sense, the Polar Vantage V3, and the Polar H10 - to the RADAR-base platform. These wearables were evaluated in terms of their ease of use, robustness, and the quality of their data collected. To this end, heart rate measurements of 13 participants were taken during different activity phases, using the newly integrated devices and a Fitbit Charge 2 for comparison. Measurements were compared to the Polar H10, as this chest strap uses ECG, which is reported to be a standard in measuring heart rate. The Polar Verity Sense was excluded due to connectivity issues. The Bland-Altman plots revealed a mean bias of 1,21 bpm for the Polar Vantage V3, of which 95% of values fell within –8.57 and 10.98 bpm. For the Fitbit Charge 2, a mean bias of 5,64 bpm was found, with 95% of values within -14,42 and 25,69 bpm. High agreement was found as the Lin’s concordance correlation coefficients (rc) were 0,98 (substantial) and 0,91 (moderate) for the Polar Vantage V3 and Fitbit Charge 2, respectively. Based on these findings, we conclude that while each of the analyzed devices is suitable for use in research, the Vantage V3 appears to be the most suitable in terms of consistency, ease of use and accuracy. Nevertheless, it is crucial for researchers to consider the differences in usage and data processing methodologies of these devices when designing their patient monitoring studies, and that they limit HR data collection throughout larger studies to a single device as much as possible.