Development of a wearable mobile electrocardiogram monitoring system by using novel dry foam electrodes

The development of many telemedicine systems focus on the utility of communication techniques. However, the comfort of long-term Electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring in daily life is necessary and is also an important unresolved issue. A wearable mobile electrocardiogram monitoring system (WMEMS) is proposed to monitor ECG in this study. It mainly consists of a wearable ECG acquisition device, a mobile phone platform, and a healthcare server. A novel dry foam electrode is also designed and embedded in the wearable ECG acquisition device. The novel dry foam electrode can provide good conductivity to acquire ECG effectively without conduction gels. By using the adapting property of the dry foam electrode, the skin-electrode impedance and the motion artifacts under movement can also be reduced by adapting to irregular skin surface. Moreover, by using the mobile phone as the system platform, the proposed WMEMS can monitor the user's ECG state continuously and anywhere in the globe if they are under the coverage of Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) cellular network. Finally, WMEMS is tested for detecting atrial fibrillation in the hospital. It really provides a good performance and is a good prototype for ECG telemedicine applications.