Heart-Monitoring “Wriskwatch": A Great Idea in Need of Funding

Everyone knows that the sooner you can help a sudden cardiac arrest patient, the better their chances of survival. So imagine how many people could be saved if their cardiac crisis was immediately noticed and alerts broadcast to the people charged with their care?

Moreover, imagine if this alert data contained information about the nearest AED; the kind designed for use by the public? Even more lives could be saved!

Making this happen starts with detecting when a cardiac incident is occurring and that’s where the ‘EMT WriskWatch’ comes in. Designed by Emergency Medical Technologies, the WriskWatch is a watch that monitors the wearer’s heart beat on an ongoing basis.

Should it stop, the WriskWatch immediately sends a signal to a nearby Bluetooth-connected cell phone (a future version may have a cell phone chipset embedded within the watch itself). Alerts are sent to EMT’s servers—which are already operational—and a phone call is made to the people who are taking care of the person; they can be family, friends, professional caregivers, or a mix of all three.

“The WriskWatch user’s alert can also be configured to alert the recipients of the nearest available AED,” said Bernard Klocman, EMT’s founder and CEO. “This means that people responding to the scene may be able to bring the AED with them, providing quicker response than the nearest EMS crew can. This scenario can truly provide an SCA victim a better chance of survival. In a gated retirement community, you could have the AED close at hand, so that the guard or neighbors can bring it with them when they come to the victim’s home.”

The EMT WriskWatch can be set to send out various levels of alerts and can also be used to call for help when wearers fall or any other emergencies that might happen. The system can trigger speaker-phones for the wearer and their support people, so that those alerted can ‘hear’ what’s happening during an alert while they’re off-site. The system can interface directly to 9-1-1, so that professional EMS can be contacted quickly.

The only downside: At press time, the WriskWatch is still seeking start-up money.

“We have working prototypes, but we need about $2 million to get them to market,” said Klocman. The company is currently in the midst of seeking backers and making presentations and is considering a crowd-funded campaign.

James Careless is a freelance writer with extensive experience covering computer technologies.