A Wearable Mobile Electrocardiogram measurement device with novel dry polymer-based electrodes

Abstract

A Wearable Mobile Electrocardiogram Monitoring System (WMEMS), which mainly consists of a wearable Electrocardiogram (ECG) acquisition device, a mobile phone with global positioning system, and a healthcare server, was developed in this study. Most of telemedicine systems for long-term ECG monitoring focus on the application of communication techniques. However, how to monitor long-term ECG state more comfortably in daily life is also an important issue. In this study, a novel dry foam electrode was designed and applied for the wearable ECG acquisition device in our WMEMS. These novel dry foam electrodes without conduction gels can provide good conductivity to acquire ECG signal effectively, and can adapt to irregular skin surface to maintain low skin-electrode impedance and reduce motion artifacts under movement. Therefore, the wearable ECG acquisition device is suitable for long-term ECG monitoring in daily life. Moreover, by combining with wireless communication technique, our WMEMS can monitor patient's heart rate continuously anywhere in the globe if they are under the coverage of GSM cellular network. Experiment results showed that our WMEMS really provides a good system prototype for ECG telemedicine applications.