The more you believe in yourself, the more the world believes in you!

Thank you all, from whom we heard today a lot of words of approval for our project and all those who believed in us and supported us. Thank Nordic Semiconductor company for appreciating our idea and opportunity to show it on such a big forum. Thank the jury of TPA for noticing us among many fantastic offers. Thank the participants of the TPA, with whom we had a chance to talk and exchange the experiences - you are very friendly, positive people with great passions!

For those who haven't already known: we have taken third place in the two classifications!

Keep your fingers crossed!

It is time to show the effect of our work. Final correction, promotional poster and the prototype of the device. Keep your fingers crossed for our victory!

We invite you to visit us at TPA: http://tpa.eestec.pl/

Hardware saw the light of day

The amplifier - size only 3x4cm  ( smaller than electrode) is ready. With the proper motivation we managed to sort  the elements in such a small area. Chapeau bas for Kamil, who with surgical precision put everything together!

Thanks to many publications, long nights with a lot of calculations...

...after collecting components and putting them together...

...we achieve signal from the electrodes which was curve ECG

Now we have to face the digital signal filtering and programming.

Project

On the below picture the block diagram of our whole idea has been presented.

On the below picture the block diagram of our whole idea has been presented.

The main aims of the project:

-         Create the amplifier that allows us to detect signal and filter out all interferences

-         Integrate Nordic’s Beacon (PCA20006) with amplifier

-         Add a software digital filter in nRF51

-         Send collected data using Nordic’s S110 SoftDevice to the Android phone

-         Create a mobile application using Nordic’S Android SDK to draw ECG curve

-         Give a nice case to our electronic

Due to short time (only 5 weeks!), we have already limited our ambitious tasks to these points. Ultimately, we would like to create the application that would be allowed to collect data in the cloud and web application analyzing the results on the website with the alarm option in case of arrhythmia.

This system would get many opportunities to use in everyday life:

·         Monitoring efficiency for athletes and amateurs

·         Elimination problems with medical data collection

·         Analyse of recording in real-time

·         Creating the base of anonymous data for scientific research

Currently on the market we can find doznes of applications which monitor health parameters in real-time. They gather data (like pulse, calorie consumption, time of sleep etc.) from sensors and show them on some built-in display or send them wirelessly to mobile phone using for example Bluetooth Smart technology.

However, there is still no available wireless device that could show electrical activity of the heart. Inside doctor’s office we can potentially see only a professional device called - Holter ECG. This thing is attached to a belt or is hung around the neck. Its long cables are connected to the electrodes, which collect electrical signal. The patient has to carry the equipment for 24 hours, then he gives it back to the doctor, who reads measures from the memory card.

As you can probably imagine, this solution is not a particularly convenient one. Considering all these, we hit on an idea to create simple, small device that allows us to see ECG in comfortable way. As we also see a big potential in IoT technology, we also decided to public collected data after all in the cloud.

Two electrodes are enough to get the basic ECG curve. Perhaps you will tell us that we won't achieve as good quality as 12-leads ECG, from those cardiologists can diagnose the most sophisticated disease - you would be right. We create a gadget that allows to see serious things that will alert you: it's time to meet a doctor. More professional equipment may be developed in the future ;)

Behind the scenes

Because we are interested in technical innovations especially "Internet of Things" we  hit on the idea to participate in the competition organized by Nordic Semiconductor. We filled out the application on the last moment (30 minutes before the deadline) with no special hopes that something can come out of it. Ideas combining electronics with medicine - because each of us must have found something for ourselves.

Two days later, the big surprise! The "miniECG" was chosen for the top ten. The company Nordic invited us to meeting and offered the work with the newest technologies. After the initial joy and celebration of success, we ran to the library to find out how a 'simple' ECG works. Three days of intensive education resulted in the concrete plan of device that we wanted to create :)

Aleksandra – medical student at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow interested in new technologies. She loves checked shirts

Kamil – student of electronics and telecommunications at the AGH University of Science and Technology. He keens on medicine, learning and sleepless nights

Challenge accepted!

Five weeks for a complicated project  - to make a gadget in form of a mini ECG. It seems to be unreal, but student needs only the date up to the project must be submitted, to his work be created!

We invite you to follow our progress in the competition Nordic Semiconductor - IoT Contest :)