Журнал медицинских методов диагностики
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Development of a Low-Cost, Portable, 12-Lead ECG Machine for Health- Care Centres Across Rural India

Pourus Mehta and Sudheer KM

India being a developing country, it concentrates its resources towards indigenizing various technologies making them economically feasible to the general population. Considering that roughly half of the country dwells in villages and small towns, even basic sanitation and primary health-care facilities are virtually non-existent in far-flung reaches of the Indian sub-continent. Coupling the problems of wide-spread poverty with increase in life-style related diseases warrants a greater budgetary allocation needed for providing primary health-care across the country. Among the various life threatening diseases cardio-vascular diseases form a sizable chunk. An attempt has been made towards indigenous development of a 12-channel ECG machine beginning from first principles. This paper presents a detailed technological overview on the development of an ECG machine with special emphasis on the design aspects of the analog front-end chip. Detailed computational simulations were employed in arriving at a viable electrical design of the front-end chip which could be fabricated cost-effectively. The front-end IC has been integrated with analog and digital modules to realize a one of a kind 12-channel ECG machine within the country.