Real-time ECG algorithms for ambulatory patient monitoring.

Brigham & Women's Hospital is designing a wireless monitoring system for patients on the waiting area of the Emergency Department. A real-time ECG algorithm is required to monitor and alert changes in patients that have not yet been admitted to the Emergency Room. For this purpose, three simple algorithms are compared in terms of processing time, beat detection accuracy and heart rate (HR) estimation. Varying amounts of noise were added to records from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database [1] to mimic expected waiting room conditions. Some recommendations regarding selection of an algorithm and further processing of HR series are presented.