J Med Syst (2016) 40:286
DOI 10.1007/s10916-016-0644-9
MOBILE & WIRELESS HEALTH
An IoT-cloud Based Wearable ECG Monitoring System
for Smart Healthcare
Zhe Yang1 · Qihao Zhou1 · Lei Lei2 · Kan Zheng1
Received: 30 June 2016 / Accepted: 18 October 2016
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Public healthcare has been paid an increasing
attention given the exponential growth human population
and medical expenses. It is well known that an effective
health monitoring system can detect abnormalities of health
conditions in time and make diagnoses according to the
gleaned data. As a vital approach to diagnose heart diseases,
ECG monitoring is widely studied and applied. However,
nearly all existing portable ECG monitoring systems can-
not work without a mobile application, which is responsible
for data collection and display. In this paper, we propose
a new method for ECG monitoring based on Internet-of-
Things (IoT) techniques. ECG data are gathered using a
wearable monitoring node and are transmitted directly to the
IoT cloud using Wi-Fi. Both the HTTP and MQTT protocols
are employed in the IoT cloud in order to provide visual and
timely ECG data to users. Nearly all smart terminals with a
web browser can acquire ECG data conveniently, which has
greatly alleviated the cross-platform issue. Experiments are
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Mobile & Wireless
Health
 Kan Zheng
zkan@bupt.edu.cn
1 Intelligent Computing and Communication (IC2 ) Lab, Key
Lab of Universal Wireless Communications, Ministry of
Education, Beijing University of Posts
& Telecommunications, Beijing, 100088, China
2 State Key Laboratory of Rail Traffic Control and Safety,
Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China
3 College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University,
Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia
· Wei Xiang3
carried out on healthy volunteers in order to verify the reli-
ability of the entire system. Experimental results reveal that
the proposed system is reliable in collecting and displaying
real-time ECG data, which can aid in the primary diagnosis
of certain heart diseases.
Keywords Health monitoring · ECG · Wearable sensors ·
IoT cloud
Introduction
With a rapid growth in human population and medical
expenditure, healthcare has become one of most significant
issues for both individuals and governments. Meanwhile,
according to a report from the World Health Organization
(WHO) [1], the problem of population aging is becom-
ing more serious. Health conditions of aged people usually
need to be checked more frequently, which poses a greater
challenge to existing medical systems. Therefore, how to
identify human diseases in a timely and accurate manner
with low costs has been paid an increasing attention [2–
4]. Due to the dominance in the diagnosis of heart-related
diseases, electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring has been
widely applied in both hospitals and medical research [5].
Traditionally, the ECG is detected through large and
stationary equipment in professional medical institutions.
The kind of equipment usually employs twelve electrodes
to collect ECG data due to their good performance in
short-term measuring. However, the equipment is unlikely
to be portable, which means that patients’ activities are
severely limited during the period of data collection. More-
over, as these devices are usually too expensive for home
use, patients have to go to hospital frequently, which will
inevitably increase the burden of hospitals. Therefore, a
286 Page 2 of 11
portable system for a long-term ECG signal detection with
low costs is highly desired.
Thanks to the development of mobile Internet and wire-
less sensor networks (WSNs) [28], wearable ECG monitor-
ing systems have emerged which are able to detect ECG
signals using a non-intrusive sensor and transmit the signal
to the smart phone through wireless transmission tech-
niques, such as Bluetooth or Zigbee [6, 7, 20, 24, 25]. For
the sake of portability, electrodes of the WSN-based ECG
monitoring systems are usually less than traditional meth-
ods. At the expense of accuracy, it is sufficient to collect
the basic information of the heart. These portable sensors
are usually embedded into some wearable textiles, which
have little impact on the user’s daily activities. With the
aid of these systems, long-term ECG can be monitored in
a cost-effective manner. However, to the best of our knowl-
edge, nearly all existing systems cannot work without a
smart phone, which is used as a receiver and processor of
the ECG data [8, 9]. Due to limited power and computa-
tional capabilities, the complex tasks of data transportation
and processing may have a great impact on the daily use of
the smart phone. Furthermore, in order to support all the OS
platforms of smart terminals, great efforts are required for
the cross-platform development of the mobile application.
In this paper, the architecture of an ECG monitoring sys-
tem based on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) cloud is firstly
proposed. Based on this architecture, we design and imple-
ment a wearable ECG monitoring system. The ECG data
gathered from the human body will be transmitted directly
to the IoT cloud using Wi-Fi without the need of a mobile
terminal. Compared with Bluetooth or Zigbee, Wi-Fi can
provide higher data rates and wider coverage areas. In order
to provide convenient and timely access to ECG data for
users, both the HTTP and MQTT servers are deployed in the
IoT cloud. The gathered data are stored in a non-relational
database, i.e., Redis, which can greatly improve the speed
and flexibility of data storage. A web-based graphical user
interface is implemented so that it provides ease of access
for doctors and patients alike using smart phones of differ-
ent OS platforms to access to the data services provided by
the IoT cloud. The proposed system has been successfully
deployed and fully tested with demonstrated effectiveness
and reliability in ECG monitoring.
The reminder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section “Architecture of IoT-based ECG Monitoring Sys-
tem” presents the architecture of the IoT-based ECG mon-
itoring system. The system implementation is introduced
in Section “Implementation of the IoT-based ECG Moni-
toring System”, which includes a monitoring node, the IoT
cloud and a graphic user interface (GUI). In Section “Expe-
rimental Results and Analysis”, we conduct several tests on
a healthy volunteer in order to verify the reliability of the
J Med Syst (2016) 40:286
proposed system. Finally, Section “Conclusion” concludes
this paper.
Architecture of IoT-based ECG Monitoring System
The architecture of the IoT-based ECG monitoring system
is illustrated in Fig. 1, which mainly consists of three parts,
i.e., the ECG sensing network, IoT cloud, and GUI.
ECG Sensing Network
The ECG sensing network is the foundation of the entire
system, which is responsible for collecting physiological
data from the body surface and transmitting these data to
the IoT cloud through a wireless channel. Wearable ECG
sensors are usually adopted in this system, which have lit-
tle impact on the user’s daily life. Through this means,
ECG data can be recorded over long hours or even days.
Then, the ECG signals are processed through a series of
procedures, such as amplification, filtering, etc., to improve
the signal quality and to meet the requirements of wireless
transmission.
The ECG data gathered from sensors are transmitted to
the IoT cloud via a specific wireless protocol, e.g., Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, Zigbee, etc [23]. All the three protocols can pro-
vide enough data rates for transmitting ECG signals with
satisfying energy consumption. However, due to the limited
communications ranges of Bluetooth and Zigbee, a smart
terminal (such as a mobile phone) is usually needed to
receive the ECG data and then send the data to the IoT cloud
through the wireless protocols of the General Packet Radio
Service (GPRS) or Long Term Evolution (LTE). Compar-
isons among various types of ECG sensing networks are
given in Table 1.
IoT Cloud
Thanks to the development of the advanced IoT techniques,
ECG data can be stored and analyzed effectively and effi-
ciently. With the aid of an IoT cloud, computation-intensive
data process and analysis tasks can be carried out in power-
ful servers, which greatly eases the burden of smart devices
[26]. Generally speaking, an IoT cloud for ECG monitor-
ing usually consists of four functional modules, i.e., data
cleaning, data storage, data analysis, and disease warning.
• Data cleaning: Significant features can be extracted
from ECG signals so as to detect potential heart dis-
eases. However, during the processes of data collection
and transmission, noise may be introduced into the
ECG signal, which would adversely affect the diagnosis
J Med Syst (2016) 40:286 Page 3 of 11 286

Fig. 1 Architecture of the IoT-based ECG monitoring systems

accuracy. Therefore, the ECG signal needs to be cleaned
at first [11]. Commonly, a properly designed filter is
employed to remove the noise outside the band of the
ECG signal. Furthermore, the procedure of data audit-
ing is usually employed to detect data anomalies and
contradictions;
• Data storage: ECG data plays a vital role in the diagno-
sis of heart diseases. Thus, historical data are needed to
be stored in the database for further analysis. The ECG
data often include the time and digitized signal ampli-
tude. In addition, at least one copy of the data needs to
be stored for disaster recovery;
• Data analysis: Making the full use of data is one of the
most important functions of the IoT cloud. Therefore,
the IoT cloud often provides a data analysis platform
to extract useful information from the ECG signal [12].
Specific data mining or machine learning approaches
can be applied to these data. For example, after extract-
ing the significant features of the ECG signal, a support
vector machine can be established to diagnose certain
heart diseases [13, 14, 27]; and
• Disease warning: Sudden heart attacks seriously
threaten the lives of cardiac patients, especially when
patients are alone. Therefore, disease warning on the
IoT cloud has become important for protecting patients
from being injured. Based on the results of data anal-
ysis, the IoT cloud is able to understand the real-time
health conditions of the patient. In the event of any

Table 1 Comparisons among typical ECG sensing networks

WiFi-based ECG Bluetooth-based ECG Zigbee-based ECG

sensing network sensing network sensing network

Protocol IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.15.1 IEEE 802.15.4

Coverage 20-200 m 20-30 m 2-20 m
Data rates 11-54 Mbps 3-24 Mbps 10-250 kbps
Power consumption Medium Low Low
Terminal dependency Data collection is inde- Smart terminals are Smart terminals are
pendent of smart termi- needed for receiving and needed for receiving and
nals. forwarding sensed data. forwarding sensed data.
Popularization High, nearly all houses Medium, often Low, only supported by
and public places pro- supported by specific devices
vide Wi-Fi access points. smartphones.
286 Page 4 of 11 J Med Syst (2016) 40:286

Fig. 2 Main components of the

ECG monitoring node

suspicious readings, the IoT cloud will notify the family satisfactory accuracy [15]. Since the typical frequency
of the patient and the doctor in time. of the ECG signal lies between 0.5 Hz and 100 Hz [16],
a band-pass filter is used in AD8283 to remove the noise
GUI outside this frequency band. After that, the filtered sig-
nal is amplified using an operational amplifier. Finally,
The GUI is responsible for data visualization and manage- with the help of the sensor module, ECG signals from 0
ment. It provides easy access to the data in the IoT cloud. v to 3.3 v are gathered.
Users can log onto the cloud to acquire visualized ECG
2) Controller module: As the core of the ECG moni-
data in real time. Generally, two kinds of GUIs are available
toring node, the controller module is used to process
for users to visualize ECG data, i.e., mobile apps and web-
the gathered ECG signal and to send them to the
pages. A mobile app can provide an immediate response to
Wi-Fi module. All the signal processing functions are
user input, while webpages are more convenient in terms of
implemented in a high-performance Microcontroller
maintenance and upgrade.
Unit (MCU), i.e., STM32F103RC [17]. This MCU is
widely used in signal processing applications due to
its powerful hardware, e.g., the 32-bit ARM Cortex-
Implementation of the IoT-based ECG Monitoring
M3 micro-controller operating at 72 MHz, a Flash
System
memory up to 512 Kbytes, and an extensive range of
enhanced I/Os and peripherals connected via two APB
Based on the architecture proposed in Section “Architec-
buses. Furthermore, for the convenience of develop-
ture of IoT-based ECG Monitoring System”, an IoT-based
ers, this MCU also provides some popular functional
ECG monitoring system is implemented using the advanced
techniques of mobile sensing, cloud computing and Web.
Details about the monitoring node, IoT cloud and GUI are
introduced as follows.

ECG monitoring node

The ECG monitoring node is responsible for collecting ECG

data from the human skin and then sending these data to the
access point via a wireless channel. As depicted in Fig. 2,
the ECG monitoring node in our system mainly includes: 1)
Sensor module; 2) Controller module; 3) Wi-Fi module; and
4) Power module. A photo of the ECG monitoring node is
shown in Fig. 3.
1) Sensor module: The sensor module is the founda-
tion of the monitoring node, which is responsible for
collecting ECG data from the human body. With the
aid of the AD8232 ECG sensor and certain periph-
eral circuit, weak ECG signals can be detected with Fig. 3 Photo of the ECG monitoring node
J Med Syst (2016) 40:286 Page 5 of 11 286

modules, such as the analog-to-digital convertors node. Two modes of power supply are provided for
(ADCs), PWM timer and communications interface. users, i.e., the USB and the lithium battery, due to their
The ECG signal is processed using this MCU, which long lifetime and high portability.
consists mainly of four procedures, i.e., sampling,
ADC, buffering, and packetizing. Firstly, the analog IoT Cloud for ECG Monitoring
ECG signal is digitized through sampling and ADC.
Then, the ECG data are temporally stored in the buffer After the system obtains large amounts of ECG data through
before being packaged in accordance with a certain for- the monitoring node, an IoT cloud is in demand to pro-
mat. Finally, the data is transmitted to the Wi-Fi mod- vide a speedy and convenient way to store these data in
ule through a Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous a database, and to display the ECG signal when required.
Receiver/Transmitter (USART). Therefore, based on the state-of-the-art techniques of web
services, cloud computing and data storage, an IoT cloud is
• Procedure 1- Sampling The ECG signal collected from
implemented which is illustrated in Fig. 4.
the sensor is in analogue format, which needs to be
sampled at first. According to the Nyquist theorem, the
sampling rate is set to be 200 Hz, given that the band-
width of the ECG signal is usually between 0.5 Hz and
100 Hz [16]. Using a 16-bit timer, the control mod-
ule can enter a timer interrupt every 5 ms for sampling
and storing. In addition, the priority of the timer inter-
rupt is made the highest so as to avoid the effect of
the other interrupts, such as the external interrupt or
USART interrupt;
• Procedure 2- ADC The MCU has three built-in 12-bit
ADCs, each of which shares up to 21 external chan-
nels, performing the analog-to-digital conversion in the
single-shot or scan modes. Only one channel of an ADC
is needed to digitize the analog ECG signal;
• Procedure 3- Buffering The ECG data are temporar-
ily stored before being packetized. The MCU has 48
Kbytes of embedded SRAM, which is enough for
buffering the data. When the ECG data accrue to 1
Kbytes, they will be packetized in accordance with a
certain format. Meanwhile, newly arrived data are also
stored in the remaining space of the buffer; and
• Procedure 4- Packetizing All ECG data are pack-
etized before they are sent to the Wi-Fi module
through the USART. A complete data packet usually
consists of a series of data fields, e.g., the header,
flags, payload, checksum, etc. These data fields are
designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data
transmission;
3) Wi-Fi module: Through the USART, the Wi-Fi
module can obtain the ECG data. The Wi-Fi module
provides a fast and convenient access to the Inter-
net, which is able to transmit real-time ECG data to
the IoT cloud. Due to the use of the powerful MCU,
data are packetized and transmitted according to certain
communications protocols.

4) Power module: The power module provides a reliable

energy supply to every module in the ECG monitoring Fig. 4 Architecture of the IoT cloud for ECG monitoring
286 Page 6 of 11
1) Servers: Three types of servers of various function-
alities are used in the IoT cloud, i.e., the storage server,
HTTP server and MQTT server. Thanks to the develop-
ment of virtualization technologies, these servers can be
established on visual machines so as to make full use of
physical resources, e.g., CPU, memory, etc. The servers
deployed in the IoT cloud are elaborated as follows.
• HTTP server: Based on the traditional request-response
mechanism, the HTTP server is able to accept users’
responses and respond accordingly. In order to access
to the ECG data, users need to send a GET request to
the IoT cloud via a URL. Then a file written in the
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is transmitted to
the browser through the HTTP protocol. The browser
is able to convert the HTML file into a user friendly
graphical interface for users to securely log into the
server. After successfully gaining the access, the HTTP
server sends another HTML file which is used to present a
graphical interface for displaying the ECG signal;
• MQTT server: The HTTP server only provides a graph-
ical interface to the ECG signal. However, the transmis-
sion of ECG data from the monitoring node to the web-
page is implemented based on the Message Queuing
Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. Unlike the tra-
ditional HTTP protocol, the MQTT protocol is designed
to maintain a long-lived connection between the device
and the client [18]. Therefore, the latency of data trans-
mission can be reduced to a certain extent. Furthermore,
the MQTT protocol requires less communications over-
heads compared with the HTTP, which helps save band-
width for data transmission. This advantage is useful
especially when the data volume is massive. Due to the
above advantages, an MQTT server is more suited for
providing real-time ECG data to users. The mechanism
of the MQTT protocol is based on the notion of “topic”.
Two types of operations are used in the communica-
tions between the device and the client, i.e., subscribe
and publish. With the help of the MQTT server, mes-
sages published on a certain topic by the device can
be transmitted to the clients who have subscribed the
same topic. Therefore, the real-time performance of the
server is improved; and
• Storage server: The storage server is responsible for
storing the ECG data into the database, which plays a
vital role in the diagnosis and early detection of heart
diseases. Thus, timely and reliable storage of the ECG
data is regarded as one of the most significant functions
of the IoT cloud. Traditionally, IoT clouds employ rela-
tional databases to store sensed data, such as MySQL
and Oracle. However, with a rapid increase in both data
volumes and types, the read-write speed of relational
databases has become a bottleneck for the performance
J Med Syst (2016) 40:286
of the cloud. Thanks to the advent of non-relational
databases, IoT clouds can store data in a more flexible
manner. As one of the most promising non-relational
databases, Redis is employed in our proposed system.
Redis stores all key-value data in the memory. As a
result, both the flexibility and the I/O speed of the
database can be greatly improved [19].
2) Main procedures of data transmission through the
IoT cloud: With the aid of the IoT cloud, the ECG sig-
nal of a certain patient can be easily obtained via a web
browser. Apart from the patient himself or herself, any-
one related to this person has access to these private
data, such as family members and doctors. Thus treat-
ment for a potential heart disease is more likely to be
carried out in time. The main procedures of data trans-
mission from the ECG monitoring node to the webpage
are depicted in Fig. 4, which are also detailed blow.
• Step 1- Request: The user sends a request to the HTTP
server to access the webpage;
• Step 2- Response: The HTTP server sends an HTML
file back to the user, which can be converted to a
webpage by the web browser;
• Step 3- Subscribe: Using the Application Programming
Interface (API) of the IoT cloud, the webpage is able to
subscribe certain topics related to the ECG monitoring
node;
• Step 4- Publish: The ECG monitoring node publishes
data to the MQTT server on a certain topic. These data
are forwarded to all the webpages that have subscribed
the same topic; and
• Step 5- Storing: ECG data are stored into the database
managed by the storage server.
GUI for ECG Monitoring
Independent of additional mobile applications, users can
login the IoT cloud and acquire ECG data by just visiting
a certain website using a web browser of any OS platform.
Therefore, nearly all smart terminals, including desktop
PCs, laptops and smart phones, are able to obtain the service
of the IoT cloud. The web-based GUI is shown in Fig. 5.
Apart from displaying real-time ECG signal, users can also
obtain the historical data by selecting the start time and end
time in the control panel.
Experimental Results and Analysis
Experimental Configurations
Conventional 12-lead systems are widely applied in med-
ical institutions, which can capture accurate ECG signals
J Med Syst (2016) 40:286
Fig. 5 Example of the GUI for the ECG monitoring system
for professionals. However, too many electrodes may have a
negative effect on the portability of the system and comfort-
ability of the patient. According to [20], a 3-lead placement
is sufficient to capture the primary features of the ECG sig-
nal. In order to best sample the ECG signal, the electrodes
need to be placed around the heart and form a triangle.
The 3-lead placement employed in our system is illustrated
in Fig. 6. Several experiments are conducted on a healthy
volunteer using the 3-lead placement for the purpose of ver-
ifying the reliability and accuracy of the proposed system.
Fig. 6 3-lead ECG electrode placement
Page 7 of 11 286
Key parameters of the ECG sensor, Wi-Fi module, server,
and volunteer are listed in Table 2.
Typical ECG signals mainly consist of five types of
waves, i.e., the P wave, T wave, Q wave, R wave, and S
wave, as illustrated in Fig. 7. The intervals of these waves
are usually used to diagnose a variety of heart diseases.
Among all the features of these waves, four are most
commonly used in medical diagnosis, i.e.,
• RR interval: As one of the most conspicuous character-
istics, the R wave is often used to identify the period
of an ECG signal. RR interval indicates the time inter-
val between two adjacent R waves, which may become
irregular in the event of some heart diseases, e.g., the
arrhythmia;
• PR interval: The PR interval measures the time between
the beginning of the P wave and that of the QRS com-
plex. It indicates the time the impulse takes to reach the
ventricles from the sinus node;
• QT interval: QT interval represents the time between
the start of the Q wave and the end of the T wave,
which is related with the ventricular depolarization and
repolarization. There is an increased risk of ventricu-
lar fibrillation or even sudden cardiac death if the QT
interval exceeds the normal value; and
• QRS complex: QRS complex is mainly associated with
the ventricular depolarization, which consists of three
important waves, i.e., Q wave, R wave and S wave.
Through analyzing the morphology and the duration
of the QRS complex, certain diseases are likely to be
detected, e.g., electrolyte imbalance or drug toxicity.
According to [21, 22], the normal values of ECG features
are listed in Table 3.
286 Page 8 of 11 J Med Syst (2016) 40:286

Table 2 Key Parameters of the

ECG monitoring system Parameters Values

ECG sensor Type AD 8283

Power voltage 3.6 v
Output voltage 0-3.3 v
Wi-Fi module Wireless transmission protocols IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
Power voltage 3.3 v
Power consumption <71 mA
Server CPU Intel Core i7-3632QM 2.2GHz / i7-3770 3.4GHz
Operation system Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 64 bit
HTTP server Apache Tomcat 8.0.27
Database Redis 3.2
Volunteer Gender Male
Age 22
Height 179 cm
Weight 65 kg

Results and Analysis processes of ventricular depolarization and repolarization.

Figure 8a plots part of the ECG data collected from the
healthy volunteer. It is evident that the intervals between
adjacent R waves (RR interval) are nearly the same, which
shows no risk of developing arrhythmias. In order to demon-
strate the key features of the measured ECG signal, two
cycles of the signal are chosen as examples, which is illus-
trated in Fig. 8b. Through comparing the values of these
features with the normal ranges listed in Table 3, certain
heart diseases can be detected preliminarily. As can be seen
from Fig. 8b, the interval between two R waves is 0.68 s,
which indicates a healthy heart rate of the volunteer. The
QT interval and QRS duration are measured to be 0.32 s
and 0.11 s, respectively, indicating no abnormality in the
Finally, the PR interval is also within the normal range,
which implies that the process of atrial depolarization is
normal as well.
Based on the above analysis, it can be concluded that this
volunteer has no obvious heart diseases, which accords with
the foregone conclusion. Therefore, the data collected by
the proposed system satisfy both the accuracy and reliability
requirements.
It is well known that the ECG signal is related to the
motion state of the volunteer, attributed to the variation of
the heart rate. To reveal the impact of movement on the
ECG signal, the volunteer is monitored under two motion
states, i.e., the stationary state and moving state. The com-
parison between the ECG signals under these two states are

Fig. 7 Standard ECG signal

J Med Syst (2016) 40:286 Page 9 of 11 286

Table 3 Normal values of key ECG paraterms illustrated in Fig. 9. As can be observed from the figure, the
cycle of the ECG signal in the stationary state is greater than
Features Normal range (Second)
that in the moving state, as a person in motion usually has
RR interval 0.6- 1 a faster sinus rhythm. However, there is no obvious differ-
PR interval 0.12- 0.20 ence between the amplitudes of the two signals, because the
QT interval 0.32- 0.44 amplitude of the ECG signal relates mainly to the resistance
QRS duration < 0.12
of the human body as well as the distance between each
electrode, which does not vary too much in the two states.

Fig. 8 Data collected by the

wearable ECG monitoring
system

(a) Portion of the measured ECG signal.

(b) Key features of the measured ECG signal.

286 Page 10 of 11
Fig. 9 Comparison of the ECG
signals in two distinct states
Conclusion
We designed and implemented an ECG monitoring system
based on cutting-edge IoT techniques. The architecture of
the ECG monitoring system was presented at first. Typi-
cal ECG sensing networks including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and
Zigbee were introduced and compared. Based on the pro-
posed architecture, an IoT-based ECG monitoring system
was implemented. Through a wearable monitoring node
with three electrodes, real-time ECG signals can be col-
lected with satisfactory accuracy. The gathered data were
transmitted to the IoT cloud using Wi-Fi, which supports
high data rates and wide coverage areas. The IoT cloud is
responsible for visualizing the ECG data to users and storing
these valuable data for further analysis, which is imple-
mented on the basis of three servers, i.e., the HTTP server,
MQTT server, and storage server. Eliminating the need of
mobile applications, the web-based GUI provides a versa-
tile means independent of any mobile OS platform for users
to access to the ECG data. Further studies on ECG monitor-
ing are still needed in the future. For example, the accuracy
of diagnostic results based on the ECG signal needs to be
improved so as to provide a more reliable disease diagnosis.
It is believed that long-term and user-friendly ECG monitor-
ing can greatly help mitigate existing healthcare problems
to a certain extent.
Acknowledgment This work was supported by the National High-
Tech R&D Program (863 Program 2015AA01A705), the China Natu-
ral Science Funding under the grant 61331009, the National Key Tech-
nology R&D Program of China under the grant 2015ZX03002009-
004, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
under the grant 2014ZD03-02.
J Med Syst (2016) 40:286
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