WE-CARE: A wearable efficient telecardiology system using mobile 7-lead ECG devices

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), principally heart disease and stroke, has become the worldwide leading killer for people of all racial and ethnic groups. In China, this disease contributes 41% to all deaths each year, and it costs the country more than 400 billion US dollars in last decade, including health expenditures and lost productivity, which continues to grow as the population size increases. Recent research findings indicate that CVD can be effectively prevented to some extent by an interdisciplinary approach that combines ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and healthcare applications. Based on this motivation, we developed WE-CARE, a Wearable Efficient teleCARdiology systEm using mobile 7-lead ECG devices. Our WE-CARE system surpasses existing resting ECG systems that reside in hospitals owing to its improved mobility brought by wearable and mobile ECG devices. Meanwhile, it outperforms those conventional dynamic 1-lead or 3-lead ECG systems for mobile users in terms of the appropriate ECG information required for clinical proposes. We carried out clinical trials by deploying the WE-CARE systems at People Hospital of Peking University. The results showed that our solution achieves a high detection rate over 95% against common types of anomalies in ECG signals, while its risk alert delay is limited around one second, both of which match the criteria of real-time healthcare monitoring very well. As demonstrated by the results, the WE-CARE system is a useful and efficient tool for the cardiovascular disease prevention and daily monitoring.