Wanna know the worst part about having a heart attack? Well, besides the numbness and desperate pain that invades your chest with the force of a thousand suns? It’s the convalescence period. You have so much time, usually at the hospital, and you are just sitting there. You are just there, like a houseplant, with nothing to do. There is only so much TV you can watch when it is hanging from the ceiling like a fan from the 1970s. Now, there just might be a way to shorten that medical stay so you can go home where you belong.
The Heartcycle Project is being developed by a consortium of European doctors and medical agencies. It’s aim? Allowing heart attack patients to access cardiac rehabilitation programs from home in a safe way, by using wearable sensors and a mobile phone. Sounds good right? It even initiates a personal rehabilitation program(exercises and healthy living guidelines) that is created by the patient’s doctor. Also, of course, the information provided is uploaded to the cloud for instant perusal by said doctor. Hopefully they won’t call glancing at your Internet chart an hour of service. That’d be enough to give your bank account palpitations.
The whole thing, sensors and all, takes the form of a fashionable undershirt which you can see above. Any of the system’s features can be accessed via smartphone or tablet device. The Heartcycle is undergoing clinical trials now and, thus far, has recorded great success. It’s at three hospitals and over 150 patients are trying it out. We’ll let you know when you can get your hands on one. We hope you don’t have to, though.
