How about taking an ECG test on your own and availing the ECG graph on your mobile phone rather than running to the doctor when you feel something's wrong with your heart?
To make the ECG data extraction a simple and common man’s process, three National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NITC) students have come up with an innovative idea to make a smart, yet handy, ECG machine.
The students, part of the ‘Robotics Interest Group’ club of NITC developed a handy prototype of the ‘Mini ECG’ controlled by an Android app that reads the heart waves and sends the recorded data to an Android phone to produce the ECG graphs.
The students are planning to make the machine smaller and launch it as a product.
“Being successful with the prototype, we are now planning to make a much more smaller ECG machine with five centimetre length and breadth and 1 cm thickness that can be attached to the body to read heart beats continuously and to take ECG data when it spots some error with the heart beat readings. Any person with heart ailments can constantly attach the small device to the body and get alerted on heart problems,” points out Subin E K, a third year BTech Biotechnology student who is leading the project.
Subin and K Naveena, a second year BTech Computer Science student, have developed the hardware of the ECG machine, while Shruti, a second year Electrical and Electronics BTech student, has helped Subin in developing the mobile app for the unit.
The small notebook-sized mini ECG they developed now reads the heart signals by attaching the three ECG electrodes in the device to the right and left sides of the chest and left leg. A microcontroller in the device analyses and processes the signals and sends the data to the Android application via a Bluetooth module in the device. The app then plots the graph using the data which can be mailed to a doctor for further analysis, reducing the need for a patient to travel to the hospital.
The ‘mini ECG’ app has been uploaded on to the Android play store for the use of NITC students. Students from other colleges who attended ‘Tathva’, the technical fest of NITC held recently, also tried out the device downloading the app.
“We are now adding more functionalities to the device. The app is being improved to provide analysis of the ECG graph. We have used three 'lead ECG' electrodes for the current prototype which has to be placed in three parts of the body and will be using 1 lead electrode for the product to be launched to make it simpler by attaching in a single body part. A similar kind of device is already manufactured by a US company and is available in Delhi AIIMS and we are planning to make the device more cost-effective by designing our own hardware parts. We have ordered the materials for making the device and will be developing it soon,” says Subin.