India developed world's smallest Silicon Cardiac Locket

In a major initiative in biophysics technology, the scientists of Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay has claimed to develop world’s smallest toffee-sized cardiac silicon computer, which can be wear like a locket on neck with its five electrodes. This nano-computer has the capacity to store the data of one week’s Electrocardiogram (ECG).

The idea of making world’s smallest wearable cardiac computer first conceived in Prof. Rakesh Lal’s (department of Bioscience and Bioengineering) mind, which transformed this idea into real with Prof. Mukharjee, an IITian professor. After wearing this locket, the heart patient does not need to go to hospital for checking his general heart’s condition, as claimed professors.

“I would be the first to buy one for my mother. The basic device is like plug-and-play. There isn’t another product like the silicon locket,” said Prof. Mukharjee.

There are several other cardiac monitor available in the market, but their size are too big to wear like locket, as the professor cited. Some models of cardiac monitor are as big as Walkman.

The locket computer has been developed in such a way that it can differentiate the heartbeat and jerks from running, working out or climbing stairs. If it detects any abnormalities, it records the last few seconds of ECG data and sends it in the form of SMS containing marked data to the central server using a mobile phone interface, which forward the message to the concerned doctor.

If anytime user feels uncomfortable, he/she will have to press a locket button to mark that data, which can be later analyzed by a doctor. The doctor scrutinizes the marked segments received via SMS and checks the heart’s activity before happening any irregularity. A user can also send its data card to a hospital to download ECG, as per developers inform to media.

A renowned Cardiologist Devi Shetty says, “There is a huge demand for user-friendly cardiac monitors in India because Indians are genetically three times more vulnerable to heart attacks than Europeans.” Sharing his experience he further said, “ The average age of my patients in India is 45 years and fathers bring their young sons for bypass grafting.”

According to World Health Organisation “The Indians and South Asians are prone to a first heart attack at age 53 and 60 percent of the world’s cardiac patients could be Indians by 2010.”

Tata Computer Services, TCS had sponsored the entire project.