New PDA Listens To Your Heartbeat

Roland Piquepaille writes "CardioNet Inc., a company based in San Diego, has developed a wireless technology to monitor heart patients. According to this Computerworld article, the technology was 'originally developed by Qualcomm Inc. to track and send messages to large truck fleets.' CardioNet's service is initially focused on the 2 million U.S. people suffering from arrhythmia. Each patient is equipped with a PDA-type electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring device connected by a short-range wireless system to electrodes on his chest. Data is sent to his doctor via a built-in cell phone chip. More details, including a diagram and pictures showing how the system works are also available."

Comments

well

[Tirel]

I don't see a point unless this includes a tracking device.. I mean, what good is it if my doctor knows I'm dying, but doesn't know where I am??

Re:well

[in7ane]

Ahh, but better yet are the false positives when it gets disconnected etc.

I think it would be more useful for monitoring (heart beat up, irregular - shove into a database, data-mine, look for high risk 'patterns') rather than notifying people of your death.

Re:well

[Stephen Samuel]

Ahh, but better yet are the false positives when it gets disconnected etc.

It won't be a false positive for very long. When the alarm goes off, it'll give you a heart attack

(talk about mrbid humor...)

Re:well

[Cerlyn]

Yes, there may be false positives/negatives. No machine I know of (and I've heard stories about several) can perfectly predict when someone is going to have a heart attack. There simply are too many variables and too many different varients and types of irregularities for a "one size fits all solution".

As long as the machine passes the ECG it sees to the doctor there should be no problems. If there is a cause for concern in the relayed data, the doctor can talk to the patient via other (non-PDA) means.

Probe disconnection should be easy to detect. Your skin has an electrical resistance much lower than an air gap. While human skin resistance is normally in the megaohms, a properly designed device should be able to detect this. Any decent digital multimeter which can read 20+ Megaohms likely can verify this (DMMs use low current, but I do *not* vouch for the safety of this procedure!).

Note IANAMD. Though I hope to be a Ph. D. someday :)

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to have arrhythmia. First note that there is wide variation in how arrhythmia affects people. For example, I'm not sure if this device would help me because my condition is not an extreme form of arrhythmia.

By itself, arrhythmia is not particularly serious; however, it can have serious secondary effects. Basically arrhythmia messes up the circulation of blood, which can lead to blood clots (because of pools of blood that aren't moving), which can lead to stroke, which is serious.

I'm currently on medication, which keeps my heart out of arrhythmia. However, it is possible that I occasionally go in and out of arrhythmia without knowing it. If I could establish that I'm not going into arrhythmia, then I could drop one of the medications I'm taking to lessen the chance of blood clots. This particular medication requires that I make periodic visits to a clinic to get the dose "calibrated."

Thus, the point of the device is to determine if the person being monitored is going in and out of arrhythmia and what kind of arrhythmia it is. Thus, in turn affects the treatment of the individual with respect to surgery, medication, etc.

Re:well

[Davak]

No machine I know of (and I've heard stories about several) can perfectly predict when someone is going to have a heart attack.

No machine that exists can predict when/if a person will have a heart attack. Even a cardiac catherization that allows one to visualize the coronary arteries can't predict this... which is kinda cool.

Heart attacks usually occur when a clot forms on a previous plaque in one of the vessels feeding the heart. Logicially you would think that the tighter and bigger the plaque, the higher the risk of a clot forming and causing a heart attack. However, this is apparently not true. Often large heart attacks are caused by clots from the smaller plaques.

Of course, this article is talking about arrhythmias... not coronary artery disease. Arrhythmias can occur from ischemia but this would be likely be a very poor way to screen somebody for this disease.

Davak

I want one

[Exiler]

If I had one of these babies I could have it log onto IRC and AIM and inform my friends via e-mail of my death =D

Only one problem...

[dnaboy]

A lot of hospitals still require people to turn off cell phones, as they allegedly might have an effect on other equipment. Talk about valuing your own life over others...

BSD

[runderwo]

Someone use it on *BSD! Finally, we can know for sure whether it is really dying, or not!

Don't use any Microsoft programs...

[JamesP]

Clippy: It seems you're having a heart attack... Do you want me to call for help?

Possibilities

[tomakaan]

I think this presents some neat possibilities beyond the mentioned focuses. It'd be pretty cool to have a PDA respond differently to you based on your heart rate (which can be an indicator to certain emotions).

love tester

[Ugodown]

Sombody will hack it and be able to hijack the wireless signal. Then love-less geeks will be able to tell by heart rate if she actually likes me... No, I mean them!

Bluetooth

[vevva]

Bluetooth has discovered a new device "Human Heart" - Autoconfigure (Yes/No)?

Dangerous for nerds

[rde]

Can you see the conversation between a doctor and a nerd about this?

Doctor: Now, Poindexter, I've just set this PDA up...
PDA: Thump... thump... thump...
Doctor: And I'm giving it to you.
PDA: Kathump...kathump...kathump...
Doctor: As well as the regular functions, it's got a few more...
PDA: KathumpKathumpKathump
Doctor:It records your heartbeat, for instance
PDA: KathumpityKathumpityKathumpity
Doctor: Oh. 180? That can't be right. It musn't work. Here, take this stopwatch, and sms me with your pulse every half an hour.
PDA: Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

A net-connected holter monitor

[dopaz]

From the article, I believe this device is simply a holter monitor that immediately sends the data elsewhere. Typical holter monitors log all the data on a device the patient wears for 24hrs. When the patient returns to the doctor's office, the device is removed and the data is transferred to one or more formats (CD, paper hardcopy, etc). If the data was being streamed and analyzed in realtime, doctors may be able to call a patient into the hospital before symptoms present themselves.

This is a great idea for parents.

[AntiOrganic]

Just hook it up to your kid's heart, and you'll know by his increased heartrate when he's downloading porn on the thing and fapping away.

Similar story..

[Flabby Boohoo]

Friend of mine has developed software that monitor's the heartbeats of infants when they come out of delivery. This software runs on an iPaq (standard, off the shelf variety). Similar features as described in the article.

Amazing the amount of work required to get that accepted by the medical establishment.

I would imagine his solution, because it does not require special hardware (for the PDA) would be more affordable.

Can you hear me now

[GillBates0]

Each patient is equipped with a PDA-type electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring device connected by a short-range wireless system to electrodes on his chest. Data is sent to his doctor via a built-in cell phone/ chip.

Can you hear my heart beat now *dub* *dub*
Can you hear it now. *dub* *dub*
Can you hear it now. *silence*... OH MY GOD THEY KILLED KENNY
YOU BAS...Naah, just lost the signal there for a while.

Spyware

[Skapare]

Spyware will now know just what great discount offers really excite you, and can report those back so you then get spammed with more such offers (until you finally have a heart attack).

PROGRESS! I love it! Embedded Systems

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Way back when I was just out of medical technology school, there was an article about the possibility of having all the lab machines hooked up to a mainframe that would control them, perhaps by the year 2000. (we had sophisticated, but pure analog eqiupment) That was just about the time Intel released the 8008, then the 8080. The first computer controlled lab equipment rolled in the door in early 1975, and by the late 1970s we were fully wired, with a network of PDP8s.

The diagnostic difficulty with cardiac arrythmias is that they are intermittent ... the chances of having one show up in the cardiologist's office is slim to none.

Then they developed the "Holter" monitor ... huge, battery operated thing that could be pushed around the wards by inpatients.

Then it was battery operated and in a fanny pack, and you wore electrodes for a few days, periodically hooking it to a special phone device to transmitted data. (similar device is/was used for high-risk pregnancies - they have a special belt to spot early labor contractions so mum-to-be can come in if needed)

Now it's continuous monitoring with something embedded that is smart enough to email the doc ... if it can make it through all that spam. There are remote embedded defibrillators. It's apparently like being kicked by a mule when it gets activated by your heart malfunctioning.