Heuristic management of physiological data

摘要

Systems and methods for management of physiological data, for example data obtained from monitoring an electrocardiogram signal of a patient. In one example use, digital data is obtained and episodes of arrhythmias are detected. Snapshots of the digitized ECG signal may be stored for later physician review. One or more techniques may be used to avoid recording of redundant data, while ensuring that at least a minimum number of episodes of each detected arrhythmia can be stored. The system may automatically tailor its data collection to the cardiac characteristics of a particular patient. In one technique, memory is allocated to include for each detectable arrhythmia a memory segment designated to receive ECG snapshots representing only the respective arrhythmia. A shared memory pool may receive additional snapshots of as the designated memory segments fill.

主权项

1. A method of collecting physiological data, the method comprising:
allocating in a memory a plurality of reserved blocks, each block designated for receiving data related to a respective one of a plurality of cardiac rhythm types; obtaining digital data representing an electrocardiogram of a patient; detecting from the digital data a first episode of a particular one of the plurality of cardiac rhythm types in the patient, wherein the particular cardiac rhythm type is a first cardiac rhythm type; storing, in the reserved block designated for receiving data related to the detected particular cardiac rhythm type, a data snapshot of the episode of the particular cardiac rhythm type; and inhibiting the recording of further episodes of the first cardiac rhythm type based on the occurrence of an episode of a second cardiac rhythm type.