A Wireless and Context-Aware ECG Monitor: An iMote2 Based Portable System

With the advent of low cost sensors and high performance mobile devices, telemedicine is well on its way to becoming part of our daily lives. While many times we see systems add a singular piece of context to ECG holter data, we believe that additional information can aid in understanding a patients condition, not only by physicians but by computerized algorithms as well. Typically, context of any sort is fundamental for having a holistic view of the user/patient’s complete situation. In that light we have developed a portable monitoring system based around a custom ECG board, an iMote2 (a platform from Intel Research) and a cellular telephone capable of transmitting information over UMTS. The iMote2 has the task of contextualizing the ECG data by adding not only accelerometer data, but ambient information as well. The integration of a subject’s activity from accelerometers and environmental data like temperature, humidity, and light intensity will give a better general picture of where the changes in ECG data come from. The system visualizes the information on a portable windows mobile handheld with the possibility of transmitting the information to a remote server for later use or re-use. The overall result is a system which provides a clean ECG signal implementing an ac-coupled front end with the potential to allow complex classifiers to run on the iMote2 platform.