Cooperative processing with mobile monitoring device and computer system

• US 7,715,905 B2
• Filed: 05/24/2005
• Issued: 05/11/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 05/25/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Medicomp Incorporated (Medicomp, Inc. /Balda/)
• Original Assignee: United Therapeutics Corporation
• Inventors: Gibson, Lucy, Albrecht, Paul, Kurzweil, Raymond C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Layno; Carl H
• Assistant Examiner(s): Gedeon; Brian T
• Application Number:
  US11/136,322
• Publication Number:
  US 20060025696A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,813 Days
• Field of Search: 600/509, 600/508, 607/31, 607/32, 607/60, 455/1
• US Class Current: 600/509
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0006 ECG or EEG signals
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/35 by template matching
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/70 for mining of medical data, e.g. analysing previous cases of other patients

Abstract

An arrangement includes a mobile device executing a process to detect an episode in electrical signals representative of a beating heart. The mobile device determines that the detected episode is a notable finding and sends data corresponding to the notable finding to a second system. The second system analyzes the data corresponding to the notable finding using one or more additional computing resources.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

a mobile device having a first computer system configured to;

detect an episode in electrical signals representative of a beating heart;

determine that the detected episode is a notable finding; and

send data corresponding to the notable finding to a second computer system external to the mobile device the second computer system accesses a storage medium having encoded thereon information representative of a database storing patterns produced from historical data on a user, the historical data including at least one of ECG strips, templates, and reference data; and

receives a pattern determined by the second computer system to reconfigure the mobile device to change analysis of data received by the mobile device, with the selected pattern being retrieved from the database and produced at least in part from the historical data on the user.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, further comprising a second computer system configured to analyze the data corresponding to the notable finding using an additional computing resource configured to reprocess data corresponding to the notable finding with greater accuracy than the first computer system.

3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the first computer system of the mobile device is configured to receive at least one pattern from the second computer system and to process the signals using the pattern.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first computer system is configured to use criteria to determine if the detected episode corresponds to a notable finding.

5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the second computer system is configured to, in response to processing the data, send to the mobile device a new pattern to be used by the mobile device to process subsequent incoming ECG data signals.

6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the mobile device operates in standalone mode when access to a second computer system is not available, and during that time, saves notable findings in memory.

7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first computer system is configured to determine that the detected episode is a notable finding by executing a procedure that comprises:

detecting a pattern that does not match any of the templates in the mobile device.

8. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first computer system is configured to determine that the detected episode is a notable finding by executing a procedure that comprises:

detecting a high level of noise in the signal.

9. The arrangement of claim 1, wherein the first computer system is configured to determine that the detected episode is a notable finding by executing a procedure that comprises:

determining that a quality measure related to the notable finding indicates low quality.

10. A computer-implemented method comprising:

using a mobile device to detect an episode in data representative of a beating heart;

determining, by the mobile device, that the detected episode is a notable finding;

sending the data corresponding to the notable finding to a second computer system external to the mobile device;

analyzing the data corresponding to the notable finding, by using information accessed from a storage medium having encoded thereon the information representative of a database storing patterns produced from historical data on a user, the historical data including at least one of ECG strips, templates, and reference data; and

receiving a pattern determined by the second computer system to reconfigure the mobile device to change analysis of data received by the mobile device, the selected pattern retrieved from the database and produced at least in part from the historical data on the user.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

analyzing the data according to patterns.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

sending, in response to the analysis of the data by the second computer system, a pattern to be used by the mobile device to process against incoming ECG data.

13. A mobile device comprising:

circuitry to receive ECG data;

circuitry to identify a notable finding in the ECG data;

circuitry to send the ECG data corresponding to the notable finding to a second computer system external to the mobile device; and

circuitry to receive, from the second computer system, a pattern sent to the mobile device, wherein the pattern is retrieved from a database and produced from at least in part historical data on a user, the historical data including at least one of ECG strips, templates, and reference data, and with the pattern being based on analysis of the ECG data sent to the second computer system using additional computing resources of the second computer system.

14. The mobile device of claim 13, wherein circuitry in the mobile device processes signals according to the pattern sent to the mobile device by the second computer system.

15. The mobile device of claim 13, wherein circuitry in the mobile device processes data collected by the mobile device according to the pattern sent to the mobile device by the second computer system.

16. The mobile device of claim 13, wherein the pattern comprises templates of signal morphologies, additional data, additional processing rules, or additional executable computer programs.

17. The mobile device of claim 13, wherein the mobile device is configured to operate in standalone mode when access to a second computer system is not available, and during that time, to save notable findings and ECG data in non-volatile memory.

18. A mobile device comprising:

sensors to receive physiological signals from a user;

circuitry that conditions the signals from the sensors and converts the signals to digital data;

a computing device to process the digital data, the computing device comprising;

a storage device that stores a computer program product to cause the computing device to;

analyze the digital signals representative of a beating heart;

conduct a detailed analysis to determine when the digital data corresponds to a notable finding;

determine when to send the digital data corresponding to the notable finding to a second computer system external to the mobile device for re-analysis; and

receive a selected new pattern to re-configure the mobile device to change analysis of data received by the mobile device, wherein the selected new pattern is retrieved from a database and produced from historical data on the user, the historical data including at least one of ECG strips, templates, and reference data.

19. The mobile device of claim 18, further comprising:

a wireless link that allows the mobile device to communicate with the second computer system.

20. A computer-readable medium having encoded thereon software for operating a mobile device, the software including instructions for causing a computer system in the mobile device to:

analyze digital signals representative of a beating heart;

determine whether the digital data corresponds to a notable finding;

determine whether to send the digital data corresponding to the notable finding to a second system external to the mobile device for re-analysis; and

receive a selected pattern to re-configure the mobile device to change analysis of data received by the mobile device, the selected pattern determined by the second computer system based on data retrieved from a database and produced at least in part from historical data on a user, the historical data including at least one of ECG strips, templates, and reference data.

21. A mobile device for communicating, to a data processing system external to the mobile device, a notable finding derived from data representative of a beating heart, the mobile device comprising:

a pattern-receiving circuit for receiving, from the data processing system, a pattern used by the data processing system to obtain data representative of a beating heart, the pattern retrieved from a database and produced from historical data on a user, the historical data including at least one of ECG strips, templates, and reference data;

a pattern-comparing circuit for providing a comparison of the pattern sent by the data processing system with data representative of a beating heart;

an episode-detecting circuit in communication with the pattern-receiving circuit for identifying an episode in the data representative of a beating heart;

a notable-finding identification circuit in communication with the episode-detecting circuit and the pattern-comparing circuit for identifying, based in part on the comparison with a pattern, a notable finding; and

a sending circuit for sending data representative of the notable finding to the data processing system; and

the pattern receiving circuit further configured to;

receive a new pattern determined by the second computer system to reconfigure the mobile device to change analysis of data received by the mobile device, the new pattern retrieved from the database and produced at least in part from the historical data on the user.

22. The mobile device of claim 21, wherein the pattern-receiving circuit receives a pattern of a single heart beat.

23. The mobile device of claim 21, wherein the pattern-receiving circuit receives a pattern representative of a cardiac rhythm.

24. The mobile device of claim 21, wherein the pattern-receiving circuit receives a pattern that includes a characteristic of a cardiac signal.

25. The mobile device of claim 21, wherein the pattern-receiving circuit is configured to receive a set of one or more conditions, and an action to be performed following the occurrence of the one or more conditions.

26. The mobile device of claim 21, wherein the notable finding identification circuit is configured to identify a notable finding in an episode based at least in part on a noise level of the episode.