Healthcare-based on Cloud Electrocardiogram System: A Medical Center Experience in Middle Taiwan

Electrocardiogram (ECG) as one of the best methods to measure irregular heartbeats is a dispensable method for doctor to diagnose Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) patients. Most medical centers in Taiwan implement the reduction of Door to Balloon (D2B) time, which is defined as the time interval starting when an Acute-Myocardial-Infarction patient arrives at the Emergency Department, and ending when a catheter guide wire crosses the culprit lesion as the acute-myocardial-infarction treatment on the patient in the cardiac catheterization room. Generally, when a patient with acute-chest pain is sent into a hospital (always to Emergency Department), the hospital will collect his/her ECG which needs to be evaluated by a cardiologist to ensure that the patient really has Acute Myocardial Infarction. Then the medical workers deliver the patient to the cardiac catheterization room to operate balloon angioplasty. In previous years, the cardiologist must utilize a PC to connect to the Intranet of the hospital and employ a special PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) image browser before he/she can check the patient's ECG. But this will prolong the D2B time since the doctor may stay outdoors and he/she needs some time to find a PC and network. Of course, if the PC has not installed the PACS image browser, the doctor has to download and install it. Consequently, the D2B time should be worsened, thus possibly impacting the patient's life. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce a Cloud-based Electrocardiogram System, with which cardiologists can directly utilize their smart phones to browse the patient's ECG so as to shorten the D2B time. This system has been online in a medical center in middle Taiwan for more than one year. The shortened D2B time is longer than 10 min, i.e., receiving fine results.