Biomedical Shirt-based ECG Monitoring

Overview

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are associated with high healthcare costs, as well as are a leading cause of mortality and hospitalizations. The main challenge for today's researchers is to develop new technologies, which may help to improve diagnosis of CVD, thereby reducing healthcare costs and quality of patients' lives. Non-invasive wearable electronics offer new capabilities for the diagnosis and management of patients with CVD. Several reports with wearable electronics have been published, in which achieved very positive results with high accuracy. Aim of our study is to show utility of biomedical shirt-based ECG monitoring of patients with CVD in different clinical situations using Nuubo® ECG (nECG) system.

The study is an investigator-initiated, multicentre, prospective observational trial. The study will be carried out in 2 tertiary university hospitals on cardiology wards (adult and pediatric). The study will consist of four independent groups of patients whose ECG will be monitored using the biomedical shirt. The study groups will be as follows: patients after pulmonary veins isolation (PVI), cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) recipients, patients during cardiac rehabilitation after myocardial infarction, and pediatric patients with supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) before electrophysiology study (EPS). Approval for all study groups was obtained from institutional review board. ECG platform The system consists of biomedical shirt, electronic device and ECG software. The biomedical shirt captures the electrocardiographic signal via the textile electrodes integrated into the garment. The biomedical shirt enable non-invasive reception of a medical-quality ECG signal through adherence of textile electrodes to the skin. The biomedical shirt-ECG monitoring is based on BlendFix® sensor electrode technology that is capable of being used in real-time and for continuous recording. To the shirt is attached the electronic device that transmits the ECG signal (as well as other signals including accelerometer and GPS) via bluetooth to a computer and stores the information in memory cards. The software allows the visualisation and analysis of data such as ECG, heart rate, activity index and relative position of the body captured by the electronic device. The platform is a medical device certified in the European Union that has been tested in patients who underwent an exercise echocardiography test.