Researchers in Ohio have developed a complete Always-On heart monitoring system.

This is big stuff, a real "killer app." I lost my best teacher ever, Dick Schwarzlose, to a heart attack last year, an attack that could have at least been treated had his doctor known it was coming.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women die each year from sudden heart attacks which are not detected, but most of these people were known to be at risk based on factors like their blood pressure and cholesterol levels. (Heck, I'm at risk for those reasons.)

If this solution can be productized and delivered with, say, the client monitor and communications hidden inside an Under Armour shirt (wicks away the sweat and looks wicked cool), then many lives can be saved, and many middle-aged men can look marvelous at the same time.

Details follow:

A prototype for detecting arrhythmia remotely, in real time, collects ECG signals, combines that with GPS location data, then transmits to a doctor's office or hospital, where it can be displayed and monitored.

This is an end-to-end system architecture, and it's pretty cheap. ECG signals are collected using an event recorder, then transmitted to a PDA using Bluetooth. The PDA tracks the patient’s location via a connection to a GPS receiver.

A long-distance link is then established via a standard Internet connection over a cellular connection, and viewed using embedded Web technology.