A J2ME mobile application for normal and abnormal ECG rhythm analysis

Cardiovascular disease has become the world's number one killer. The prevalence of cardiovascular disease has caused many unnecessary premature deaths and imposed substantial burden to healthcare systems. Many continuous heart monitoring systems have been proposed with the aim to issue early stage warning for a possible forthcoming heart attack by utilising advanced information and communication technologies. Nevertheless, there is still a significant gap between the usability and reliability of those systems and the requirements from medical practitioners. This chapter presents our recent development of a mobile phone based ECG real-time intelligent analysis system. By fully employing the computational power of a mobile phone, the system provides local intelligence for ECG R wave detection, PQRS signature identification and segmentation, and arrhythmia classification. Because those processing can be performed on realtime, an early status warning can be issued promptly to initiate further rescue procedures. As an application of e-commerce in healthcare, a telecaridiology system like this is of great significance to support chronic cardiovascular disease patients.