Interactive progressive-based approach to aid the human interpretation of the 12-lead Electrocardiogram

Abstract

The 12-lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important diagnostic support tool but is frequently incorrectly interpreted. This is partly due to the fact that even expert clinicians can impulsively provide a diagnosis based on first impression/intuition. It is therefore imperative to optimise how physicians interpret the 12-lead ECG. Hence, a set of interactive questions and prompts has been developed to guide an observer through a series of tasks when interpreting an ECG. This has been named `Interactive Progressive based Interpretation' (IPI). Using this model, the 12-lead ECG is segmented into five parts and presented over five web based user interfaces. The IPI model was implemented using emerging web technologies such as HTML5. Thus, a new model has been proposed to aid ECG interpretation where observers systematically and sequentially interpret the 12-lead ECG as a series of sub-tasks. We hypothesize that this will reduce the number of errors and increase diagnostic accuracy.