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Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) and its direct consequences is the number one cause of death in high income and middle income countries such as EU countries and the number four cause of death in low income countries; in 2008, IHD caused 7.25Mn deaths globally and a little over 1Mn in the European Region. In addition, IHD is the second leading cause of burden of disease (as measured in Disability-Adjusted Life Years or DALYs, or years of lost healthy life) in the high and middle income countries and number nine in low income countries; in the European Region, IHD is the number one cause of disease burden.
Between 70% to 90% of the episodes of IHD that can be detected with ECG are clinically silent, with patients unable to report symptoms like chest pain or discomfort. Currently, if an out-patient is suspected to have IHD, he or she is referred to the “stress test” Stress test is relatively expensive in Europe (€3,000 – 4,000 per procedure), requires qualified medical assistance during preparation, testing and result interpretation and has a long waiting period (3 to 6 months). Critical in-patients are normally monitored with the continuous 12 lead ECG for 24-48 hours in the hospital in an even more expensive procedure.
We propose to develop a novel wireless product for preventive screening and monitoring of IHD that is able to monitor patient’s ECG during daily activities over a 24 to 48 hour period with quality of the SoA 12 lead ECG unit as a new type of ambulatory ECG that would cost less than 20% of the stress test. Innovative approaches are to include a truly wireless solution for patient convenience, patient positional information, information of breathing activity and tissue oxygenation as the need for automatic adjustment of continuous ECG signal for patient’s orientation during the cardiac cycle and adjustment for types of physical activity and irregular heartbeats have become the requirement by the medical community. |
