Electronic healthcare

A Bluetooth-based heart monitor system could text your local hospital if you are about to have a heart attack.

The system, developed by Thulasi Bai and S.K. Srivatsa of the Sathyabama University in Tamil Nadu, measures electrical signals from the heart, analyses them to produce an electrocardiogram (ECG) and then sends an alert together with the ECG by cell phone text message.

Cardiovascular disease kills almost 20 million people each year, with around 22 million people at risk of sudden heart failure at any one time around the world. Lives can often be saved if acute care and cardiac surgery are carried out within a so-called 'golden hour'.

Although survival rates are on the increase as treatments improve, this means there are more and more patients whose cardiac health has to be monitored so that follow-up treatment can be given if problems arise.

Available methods of heart monitoring usually restrict the mobility of patients to a hospital or a single room. But the new wearable cardiac telemedicine system would allow post-cardiac patients renewed mobility.