A portable ECG recorder

ECG (electrocardiogram) is currently the most effective way to detect the heart condition. Previously people have to go to special organization, e.g. hospital, to do the ECG recording. But sometimes when the patient arrives at the hospital, the symptom has disappeared. This may loss the early treatment opportunity. In this project, we use the Android smartphone and a Bluetooth enabled device to acquire the ECG signal. When the user feels something wrong with the heart, he/she can do the ECG recording immediately. The device uses a conductive belt to measure the ECG signal. The measured signal is sent to the smartphone via Bluetooth. Normally the ECG waveform is displayed on the screen of the smartphone to monitor the heart condition. The user can store the ECG waveform for further investigation. The waveform can be stored on the SD card of the smartphone for short term storage. It can also be sent to the cloud computer for long term storage and be accessed globally via the Internet. For the heart disease patients, they can use this device to track the effect of the medicine by storing the ECG before and after taking the medicine. This can help the doctor to decide the effectiveness of the medicine as early as possible, and avoid the waste of medical resources. This device can also be used in real-time which is useful for remote medical care.