Feeling chest pain? Use your mobile to analyze your heart

Coronary heart disease is by far the most common cause of death in many countries. For example, every few seconds someone in Europe is suffering of chest pain caused by an insufficient supply of blood to the heart.

While a short-term oxygen scarcity usually origins angina pectoris, a long-term severe lack of oxygen causes a myocardial infarction, which may eventually lead to a cardiac arrest. Therefore it is very important to identify a heart attack and immediately seek for medical attention. However heart attack victims can wait on average two hours or more after the beginning of symptoms before they seek medical help but sadly it might be already too late then.

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is certainly the most effective way to identify anomalies in the cardiac activity. “An electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG, abbreviated from the German Elektrokardiogramm) is a graphic produced by an electrocardiograph, which records the electrical activity of the heart over time - Wikipedia”

Symbian mobile phones provides excellent platform for home heart monitoring. The heart monitoring can be performed using wearable wireless ECG miniature sensor (e.g. Mega Electronics Wireless Bio-Amplifier, WBA), which continuously measures the heart activity and wirelessly transfers the data directly to the mobile phone using Bluetooth. The information then can be automatically transferred to the health care provider using mobile phone networks or even analyzed on the device.

Mobile phone solution like this offers users the capability of recording and simultaneously transmitting the ECG signal whenever they feel pain in the chest or heart irregularities. Additionally, the feeling of being in virtual contact with the health care professionals provides a sense of safety, without the hassles of permanent monitoring.

However, several measurement sessions may need to be taken in different situations to assess the best information of the condition of the heart. So, this kind of mobile phone based ECG monitoring offers a valuable tool for easy measurement of ECG without interfering with everyday’s life.

Source: http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/s60/2007/08/01/feeling-chest-pain-use-your-mobile-to-analyze-your-heart.