A Bluetooth Solution for Proximal Wireless ECG Telemonitoring

Abstract - Cardiovascular diseases represent an important contribution to the mortality, often due to the lack of a medical surveillance. An on-line, long-term monitoring of patient's electrocardiogram could be a solution. A telemonitoring method allows a remote surveillance. A wireless telemonitoring method may also allow the patient's mobility. The paper proposes a simple and cost effective method to monitor, on-line and long-term, a free-to-move patient, in proximity, using Bluetooth. This method offers also other advantages.

Keywords: ECG monitoring, Bluetooth tele-monitoring, Bluetooth headset, Bluetooth USB adaptor.

I. INTRODUCTION

Each year, about one third of deaths are caused by cardiovascular diseases. An adequate medical surveillance is needed, including an on-line, long-term monitoring of electrocardiogram (ECG) and other vital functions.

An advantage for the patient is to ensure his mobility, in the proximity of the monitor or, furthermore, at long distances, far from the hospital (an advantage also for the medical team).

A lot of papers referring to Bluetooth monitoring systems were published (e.g. [1-4]). Also, some solutions for proximal wireless monitoring are available on the market, using non-Bluetooth and Bluetooth (e.g. [5-8]) technologies.

A solution to implement a short / long distance ECG wireless telemonitoring was presented in a previous paper [9].

This paper refers to the short distance ECG telemonitoring part and provides a new and very simple wireless solution, to be implemented at the hospital, at home or in other situations when proximal telemonitoring is needed. This solution has also some other advantages, presented in the paper.

Section II presents the general structure of an ECG monitoring equipment, the reasons and the ways to reduce the patient's part. In section III are presented block diagram and component parts of the new solution. Section IV summary presents the Bluetooth technology. Section V deals with some parameters to be followed. Section VI summary presents the components used in trials. Finally, some conclusions are reviewed in section VII.

II. CARDIAC TELEMONITORING

There are many clinical situations (e.g. during a surgical intervention, after a miocardial infarction incident etc.) and non-clinical situations (e.g. emergencies or calamities, for people deploying dangerous activities, for cardiac patients or elderly people at home etc.) in which continuous, long-time observation of ECG signal and heart rate is critical.

Dealing with such situations is possible by using cardiac monitors. They continuously display 1, 3, 6 or 12 ECG signals and cardiac rhythm of a patient and warn in case of too high or too low rates. They may also deal with some other physiological parameters (blood pressure, temperature, respiratory rhythm etc.). A general block diagram of a cardiac monitor is presented in Fig.1 [9].

Among the main goals in designing a cardiac monitor are:

a) to ensure portability with a minimum discomfort for the patient;

b) to extend the patient mobility.

This may be accomplished by using wireless telemonitoring techniques.

Wireless telemonitoring represents the use of (radio) communications and informatics to monitor a free-to-move patient from a distant location. An ideal telemonitoring service would have the following features [10]:

a) a free-to-move (domestically) patient would be monitored from remote, whenever the sensor is attached to his body ("always-on");

b) the patient should not be required to do a complicated sequence of actions to activate the link with the health center ("user-transparent");

c) the system should offer a high quality of service, in house and around it ("full area coverage");

d) both patient and doctor would be able to trigger the monitoring session ("push / pull");

e) the system should offer an "always-on" or "often-on" monitoring service ("long-term monitoring");