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Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT-Hyderabad) have developed a low-power device that can monitor electrocardiogram (ECG) and alert patients and doctors in real-time.
Risks from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) top the list of public health concern as they are the primary cause of human death, according to a survey of the World Health Organization (WHO). The main causes include changing lifestyle, unhealthy eating habits, tobacco usage, low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity and chronic stress.
The device
A team of researchers, consisting of Vemishetty Naresh and Amit Acharya of the IIT-Hyderabad, designed the device to diagnose medical conditions from ECG data on a real-time basis. The device consumes less power too.
To prove its efficacy, the researchers have taken case studies from the Physionet database. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports, an online open access journal from Nature. “CVD is one of the deadliest diseases and irrespective of the economy of the country, people are getting affected by it. It is manifested in different forms, necessitating early diagnosis, therapy and prognosis,” Amit Acharya said.
In addition, they also worked on developing different classification techniques and integrating them to make a generic algorithm. A System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture is developed in a low complex way by resource sharing concept for the CVD automation. Thus, the whole system can cover various ECG abnormalities and finally come up with the prototype board which looks similar to a smartphone.
Relevance
Access to CVD care in India is relatively poor as the primary health care system in India has largely been focussed onthe management of communicable diseases and maternal and child healthcare.
Considering the statistics of CVD deaths, the integration of CVD preventive care in the primary healthcare centres in India requires special attention, with a need for innovative models in health promotion, the researchers felt.
In this context, the remote CVD device having low form factor, consuming minimal power for prolonged battery life with the ability to extract significant clinical features for the cardiovascular diseases classification and prediction at an affordable cost becomes necessary.
The project was partly supported by Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the ‘Internet of Things (IoT) Research of Interdisciplinary Cyber Physical Systems (ICPS) Programme,’with the Project entitled ‘IOT Based Holistic Prevention and Prediction of CVD.’