Wearable computing for patients with coronary diseases

Cardiovascular diseases are killing more and more people around the world, striking rich and poor alike. The World Health Organization identifies these diseases as challenges to population health and well being and calls it a global epidemic. These diseases can seriously affect the life of both the patient and family. In tandem with a strategy to provide information and education to individuals at risk, Information and Communication Technologies can be a valuable tool to address the challenges posed by this global epidemic. The HEARTRONIC project is developing an innovative system for prevention and early warning by continuous monitoring the heart conditions. This system is wearable by the patient, monitors and analyzes the heart beat, and in the event of results that could predict a heart attack or stroke an alert message is sent to a server and them relayed to the responsible healthcare professional. The system uses EGC processing for automatic detection of abnormal functioning. First response actions are taken but the healthcare professionals are always in the control loop and can cancel or impose actions other than the ones decided by the system. System integration is starting and first trials are planned. Besides validating systems functionalities, these trials will allow to calibrate the sensitivity of the algorithms: high sensitivity may cause numerous false positives, while low sensitivity may result in misdiagnosis of potentially life threatening conditions.