Portable device allows programming of implanted cardiac devices at a normal visit to the doctor

The Merlin Patient Care System, developed jointly between IBM and St. Jude Medical, is a portable device that allows doctors to monitor and program implanted defibrillators and pacemakers in patients.  The new device makes reprogramming the implant possible through a normal office visit and replaces the current invasive procedure.  This is good news for those with these types of cardiac implants and hopefully we will see a wide roll-out of these systems to physicians soon.

The Merlin Patient Care System is a portable computer with an LCD touch screen that enables clinicians to retrieve and analyse patient information during routine follow-up visits and quickly and easily make programming changes to the implanted devices.  It is compatible with current and previous generation devices.

IBM helped St. Jude Medical integrate the viewing screen with touch-point capabilities, an embedded keypad platform and a Linux-based operating system with an intuitive graphical user interface.

(via Engineer Online)

-jk

Comments have been disabled for this post