EKG Business Card Warms Our Hearts

Giving out a paper business card is so 1960s. Giving out a PCB business card, well that gets you up to the early 2010s. If you really want to stand out these days, give them a fully-functional EKG in a business card. (Note: works best if you’re leading an open-source electrocardiography project.)

Looking through the schematics (PDF), there’s not much to the card. At the center of everything is an ADuC7061, which is an ARM microprocessor equipped with 24-bit ADCs that also has an internal DAC-driven voltage reference connected to one of the user’s thumbs. This, plus a little buffering circuitry, seems to be enough to translate the tiny voltage potential difference across your two hands into a beautiful signal on the included OLED display. Very nice!

Everything (including the big version of their EKG) is open source and made on an open toolchain. If you’re interested in health and medical sensing, you should head over to the project’s GitHub and check it out. The standalone open EKG is based on a much more complicated circuit, and stands to be more accurate. But the business card version is just soooo cute!

Thanks [Ag Primatic] for the tip!

32 thoughts on “EKG Business Card Warms Our Hearts

  1. Even taking an ECG reading from thumbs is enough to get the information that an amateur or even an average doctor or paramedic will be able to use. The ECG is simply an electrical trace of the direction of electrical flow in the heart which is made of cardiac muscle, think hybrid self twitching nerve/muscle hybrid fiber, the left to right arm electrical axis carries the required information. You could diagnose PVCs, V-tach, AV blocks, a-fib/flutter, SVT, etc. Unless the nice P-QRS-T wave we see in the pic is simulated this card is giving as much diagnostic information as an old Lifepack-10 of the 90s where you could do a quicklook with the defib paddles in a crashcart/ambulance situation to diagnose a pulseless shockable rhythm and get those first shocks in, start CPR ,intubate, establish an IV(or squirt ’em down the ET tube) and get those firstline ACLS drugs onboard before you had time to get the sticky pad 3-lead electrodes attached.

    1. IKR? I put myself on the mailing list so I know when these cards become available. $29 starting out is really not bad for a little device like this, not to mention as a little kit ECG device to throw into your first aid kit for the hell of it.

      1. This looks a super cool toy (Mobilecg’s own description) but maybe not necessarily useful for a first aid bag. I mean “Please stop clutching your chest and hold this card for a minute instead”. If throwing into a first aid kit, make sure you throw in a spare battery cos sods law states that it would be flat the first time you see an opportunity to use it for real. After all, there is no mechanical off switch so it is always powered up to some extent.

      2. Well if your going to put it in a first aid kit maybe dumb the read out a bit, something like, “You’re OK”, “Get to a Doctor NOW” and “HOLY SHIT!” just to let untrained people without much doubt what to do.

  2. This business card is a nice gimmick. The low cost (sub $200,-) mobileECG is the real deal and much more interesting to me. I’ve worked for a Univerisity Medical Center and they are working on non-invasive measuring of the cardiac output (amount of blood pumped by the heart). They call it the ‘holy grail’ of cardiology.

    This project is combined with a ECG cannot be used for diagnostics etc. Still its a massive project. That’s why I’m impressed with the opensource mobileECG. I’m not sure if it’s up to the Dutch safety standards. A ECG needs to be ‘defibrillator proof’ (up to 5kV/50A, 400J). http://www.medteq.info/med/DefibTests

  3. Okay, this is cool. How do we port this to an article of clothing or into a dual watchband style device to allow a complete tracking of pulserate and heart activity during a workout??

      1. The purpose here is to make a card that is highly memorable and not likely to be thrown away. Most people are going to be pretty captivated by this and are likely to show it to their friends and colleagues. It’s just a way to do word of mouth advertising.

        “If they’re interested, it’s because of what I do not a mere card.”
        And if they’re interested but don’t know it yet, they throw your card to the bottom of the bin and never look twice.

        People absolutely overestimate how important business cards are. But for every unnecessarily complex business card in existence, there is one curmudgeon on the internet feeling the need to complain about it.

    1. So you are in the paper business card printing business, eh?

      This card is a representation of what he does. Like giving someone a tiny screwdriver for parts stores or an emblazoned bike wrench. It is pretty sweet imho (and sorry couldn’t help the goof-no offense).

      If you search HaD you will find this other guy that shows up on here almost every year with some stupid dev board business card. The thing to note is how he has to make new cards every couple of years so…must not be a keeper lol. I had your reaction to that other guy and he is a far better choice to adjust the onions on our belts at ;)
      Maybe I am wrong and the guy’s prospective bosses are emailing him daily saying “Sir I built a blinking led with your dev board and am enthralled, it is way better than shopping on amazon for an hour and then selecting a person that has a similar first letter in their name. You may report to work at any time tomorrow since I cannot read this amazing binary clock you gave me-just wow!!” heh heh

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