For World Health Day, a group of Class 10 students from Shiv Nadar School in Gurgaon are making a smart device to try to solve one of India’s biggest health problems: heart risk.
The prototype is called ArryhthmiX and is meant to be a small ECG-based monitor that uses machine learning to keep track of heartbeats and alert users to possible problems. The idea is still in its early stages and is being tried by people inside the company. It shows how young people are using technology to look into preventive health care.
From a personal reason to a bigger health issue
The idea for ArrhythmiX came from both personal situations and a more general study into heart health.
People in our family have had heart attacks, and when we started looking into it, we saw how common it really is, said Daksh Vohra, who worked on the project’s hardware design and machine learning.
According to the students’ study, a lot of deaths in India are caused by heart problems. This made them wonder if early signs in heart rate could be tracked more effectively.
How the device works
ArryhthmiX
ArryhthmiX is an ECG monitor that you can wear. It tracks your heart signs continuously and runs them through a unique machine learning model.
The device is made up of several parts, such as
- An ECG monitor to record data from the heart
- A microprocessor for doing work
- An inertial measurement unit (IMU) to keep track of movement
- Battery tracking tools built into a special PCB
Before being sent to the model, the ECG signal is filtered and denoised. The model then looks for trends and makes risk markers based on abnormal beats.
The students used MIT PhysioNet and other freely available medical datasets that are widely used in physiological signal studies to train and test their method.
Early internal testing and observations
The team did internal testing in several stages while being supervised by professors.
Trials were first done on team members, and then longer tests were done on a heart patient over several days and hours. The students say they checked to see if their readings were correct by comparing them to ECG reports from a hospital.
The gadget was also tried in real life situations, like while sitting, walking, sleeping down, and doing light exercise, to make it better at handling noise that comes from movement.
Since the device is meant to be worn all day, testing it while moving was very important. That helped us make our denoising algorithm better, said Ishaan Adhikari, who designed systems and built software.
Although these early findings were positive, the team knows that the gadget needs to be tested on a larger scale and proven to work better.
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Overcoming Technical Challenges
Making sure the signal quality was always the same was one of the team’s biggest problems.
Early versions had trouble getting accurate readings as the electrodes weren’t strong enough. To fix this, the students made a special electrode patch out of cloth that let air pass through it. This made it more comfortable and improved the signal accuracy. They also tried using an electrode belt for a different purpose.
Another big problem was making a machine learning model that was both accurate and useful. This took months of testing and iteration.
The team said, It took us hundreds of hours and almost six months to make a prototype that worked.
Cost benefit and ease of entry
The cost of the project is one of the things that makes it stand out.
The prototype costs about Rs 3,550 to make right now, with the printed circuit board making up a big chunk of the cost. The group thinks that making the device on a larger scale could cut costs by more than 30%.
This makes ArryhthmiX a possible, less expensive option to high end portable ECG devices like the Apple Watch ECG. However, the students stress that their gadget is still being developed.
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Limitations and the way ahead
Even though early results look good, the team is aware of what their present version can’t do.
What they are doing is to:
- Improve comfort and energy life
- Make the related mobile game better.
- Use bigger and more varied medical samples to train their model.
- Include more factors, like age and gender, in your risk study.
- As the students put it, ArryhthmiX is a working prototype that is still evolving. Some parts are ready, but others are still being improved.
Mentorship, morals, and safe tests
As part of the school’s capstone program, which pushes students to use technology to solve real world problems, the project was created.
Head of the Computer Science Department and guide Nitesh Kumar said that the process included organized help during the study, planning, and testing steps.
It’s important to note that all internal tests followed ethical guidelines, such as getting full permission, using non invasive methods, and following data privacy rules. External contact was also made possible by the school. For example, students could talk to doctors and go to Medanta hospital to see how ECG systems work in real life.
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Beyond the classroom
The kids now want to take ArrhythmiX beyond school, with plans to show it off on national and maybe even foreign stages.
A big focus is still on more development, such as more medical testing and better technology details.
ArrhythmiX hasn’t been tested in patients yet, but its creation shows how early STEM education is helping students deal with tough healthcare problems in useful ways. This is a great idea that fits well with the spirit of World Health Day.
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