IOT-BEAT: An intelligent nurse for the cardiac patient

Cardio-vascular diseases (CVD) are rapidly increasing in the urban lifestyle. CVDs rank #1 in the world when it comes to diseases causing deaths. More people die annually from CVDs than from any other cause. Around 17 million people died from CVDs in the year 2012, representing 31% of all global deaths. In India alone there are around 64 million cardiac patients and only 4000 cardiologists available. Arrhythmia is the most frequent occurring CVD. Patients having Arrhythmia require continuous monitoring so that the doctor can study the abnormality in their heart beats to gain further insights and suggest treatments. In some cases Arrhythmia can be fatal and might need immediate hospitalization. For this purpose, we have developed a system that remotely acquires ECG sensor readings (taken from MIT-BIH database) of the patient, processes it to predict arrhythmia intelligently and sends the indication alarm immediately to the doctor, when an Arrhythmia episode is detected. Also a report of the patient's heart behavior is generated and fetched to the doctor on his smart phone. Our system aims at spreading cardiac care to urban as well as rural places by enabling the remote monitoring the ECG signals of the afflicted cardiac patients and alerting the doctor in case of emergencies.