Design and Validation of a Custom-Made Electrocardiogram (ECG) Machine for Low-Cost, High-Fidelity Cardiac Monitoring

Objective: Electrocardiography (ECG) is an essential diagnostic tool in cardiovascular medicine; however, access remains limited in low-resource settings because of cost and infrastructure requirements. This study aimed to develop and preliminarily validate a low-cost, custom-made ECG device capable of real-time cardiac monitoring and arrhythmia detection.
Methods: A portable ECG system incorporating a low-noise analog front-end, microcontroller-based digital processing, and Bluetooth-enabled wireless transmission was designed. Preliminary validation was performed using simultaneous recordings from one healthy volunteer and three patients with documented cardiac arrhythmias, and the results were compared with those of a commercial ECG system in terms of signal quality and rhythm interpretation.
Results: The custom-made device provided stable real-time ECG recordings with satisfactory signal fidelity and low noise levels. Comparative analysis demonstrated encouraging agreement with the commercial ECG system in waveform morphology and arrhythmia identification. Wireless data transmission was reliable throughout the recordings.
Conclusion: This pilot proof-of-concept study demonstrates the technical feasibility of a low-cost, custom-made ECG system for real-time rhythm monitoring and preliminary detection of selected cardiac arrhythmias. The device showed satisfactory signal fidelity and agreement with a commercial ECG system in a small validation cohort. Larger prospective studies are required to establish diagnostic accuracy, reproducibility, and clinical generalizability.

Keywords: Cardiac monitoring, low-cost ECG device, telemedicine