A client/server system for remote diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmias

Health care practitioners are often faced with the task of interpreting complex heart rhythms from electrocardiograms (ECGs) produced by 12-lead ECG machines, ambulatory (Holter) monitoring systems, and intensive-care unit monitors. Usually, the practitioner caring for the patient does not have specialized training in cardiology or in ECG interpretation; and commercial programs that interpret 12-lead ECGs have been well-documented in the medical literature to perform poorly at analyzing cardiac rhythm. We believe that a system capable of providing comprehensive ECG interpretation as well as access to online consultations will be beneficial to the health care system. We hypothesized that we could develop a client-server based telemedicine system capable of providing access to (1) an on-line knowledge-based system for remote diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmias and (2) an on-line cardiologist for real-time interactive consultation using readily available resources on the Internet. Furthermore, we hypothesized that Macintosh and Microsoft Windows-based personal computers running an X server could function as the delivery platform for the developed system. Although we were successful in developing such a system that will run efficiently on a UNIX-based work-station, current personal computer X server software are not capable of running the system efficiently.