A telemedicine application utilizing datasocket® to remotely track the heart rate variability of patients in a clinical research environment

We present the remote monitoring and control features of a computer program for the data acquisition, analysis and demographic database of patient data for clinical research. The heart rate variability (HRV) of patients needed to be determined from patient electrocardiogram and shared with other researchers on line. The key requirements of the remote features were identified as being speed of implementation, cost and ease of use while preserving the functionality of the program. The system needed to integrate seamlessly into the clinical environment with minimal, if any, disruption of the standard operating procedures related to patient care. This novel method uses the DataSocket application programming interface (API) to simplify and economically develop the remote communication features of our heart rate variability acquisition and analysis program. We successfully met our goal of remotely collecting our patient data and sharing it with our colleagues in the hospital in real time.