A Wireless 3-channel ECG Transmission System Using PDA Phone

The present study developed a wireless 3-channel ECG transmission system that can monitor the health and movement of the old, the weak and the disabled using a PDA phone. This system was designed to get information on heart diseases that may break out suddenly in daily life. The purpose of this study is to improve the quality of life by monitoring patients´ health condition continuously for 24 hours and coping with sudden attacks of diseases promptly. The developed system is composed of a transmitter, a receiver and a remote server. The transmitter stores information on the patient´s heart condition and activity functions in flash memory and, on the happening of an event, it sends data for the last 30 seconds to the receiver using wireless communication technology (Zigbee). The receiver is composed of a Zigbee receiver and a PDA phone. It forwards the received data to the remote server, and the remote server displays the transmitted data on the screen so that the doctor can monitor the patient´s condition. In order to evaluate the performance of the developed system, an experiment was conducted on four types of motions (sitting, standing, rising from the seat and walking), and the subject´s ECG and activity functions were displayed according to the type of motion, and it was confirmed that 48 Kbyte data were transmitted accurately without any error. Therefore, the system developed in this study is expected to be usable as u-Healthcare equipment that can monitor the old, the weak and the disabled continuously and the remote server is expected to enable accurate diagnosis and prompt response to emergencies through continuous monitoring.