System and method for processing and presenting arrhythmia information to facilitate heart arrhythmia identification and treatment

#The present application describes systems and techniques relating to processing and presenting arrhythmia event information from physiological data, for example, selectively presenting atrial fibrillation events to a medical practitioner.

#Over the years, various devices have been used for monitoring hearts in living beings. Additionally, systems have been used to collect and report on heart information obtained from patients.

#In general, in one aspect, a heart monitoring system collects heart data from a monitored individual and stores the data at a monitoring center. Collected data can be processed, and graphical representations of the collected information can be presented to medical practitioners to assist in treating heart arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation. A system and method can involve operations including identifying arrhythmia events in physiological data obtained for a living being, receiving human assessments of at least a portion of the arrhythmia events, determining a measure of correlation between the human assessments and the identified events, and selectively presenting information regarding the identified events based on the measure of correlation. The operations also can include identifying atrial fibrillation events in physiological data obtained for a living being, obtaining heart rate data for the living being, and presenting information regarding the heart rate data and duration of the atrial fibrillation events together with a common time scale to pictographically represent heart rate trend with atrial fibrillation burden during a defined time period.

#FIG. 1 illustrates, according to an exemplary embodiment, a system for reporting information related to arrhythmia events.

#FIG. 2 shows, according to one embodiment, a graph presenting an example of atrial fibrillation burden and heart rate trend.

#FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating, according to an exemplary embodiment, a procedure for monitoring, processing, and reporting information related to arrhythmia events.

#FIG. 1 illustrates, according to one embodiment, a system for reporting information related to arrhythmia events, such as atrial fibrillation events. In this embodiment, monitoring system 109 can communicate (via devices 101 and 102) ECG (electrocardiogram), cardiac event, and other data to monitoring center 104. The system 109 can include, for example, an implantable medical device (IMD), such as an implantable cardiac defibrillator and an associated transceiver or pacemaker and an associated transceiver, or a monitoring device 101 that a patient 110 wears. Further, monitoring system 109 can include a monitor processing device 102 that can send standard physiological data (received from monitoring device 101) to monitoring center 104 and that can detect arrhythmia events (such as atrial fibrillation events). In one implementation, the devices 101 and 102 are integrated into a single device. Moreover, the system 109 can be implemented using, for example, the CardioNet Mobile Cardiac Outpatient Telemetry (MCOT) device, which is commercially available and provided by CardioNet, Inc of San Diego, Calif.

#Monitor processing device 102 can transmit physiological data (including data related to arrhythmia events) through a communication network 103, which can be a local area network (LAN), a landline telephone network, a wireless network, a satellite communication network, or other suitable network to facilitate two-way communication with monitoring center 104. Advantageously, monitoring center 104 can be located in the same location (e.g., in the same room or building) as monitoring system 109 or at some remote location.

#The monitoring center 104 can include a monitoring (or display) station 105 and a processing system 106. In one implementation, a cardiovascular technician (CVT) can use the monitoring station 105 to evaluate physiological data received from monitoring system 109, identifying and reporting, among other things, arrhythmia events (such as atrial fibrillation events). The CVT reports these assessments of the physiological data to the processing system 106, which also receives information related to the arrhythmia events identified by monitoring system 109. As will be explained further below, processing system 106 analyzes this arrhythmia event data (both the human-assessed data from the CVT and the data reported by monitoring system 109) and determines whether to generate a graph (or other similar presentation) related to these events. In certain circumstances, the processing system will send a report related to both arrhythmia and heart rate data to, for example, a physician or other health care provider 108 via transmission path 107—which may be part of the network 103.