Patent ID: 7117031

Claim:
A long-term monitor using scheduled short-term acquisition of data from a patient for determining whether an arrhythmia selected from the group consisting of at least one of atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, a prolonged QT interval, atrial tachycardia, PVC's, and ventricular pauses exists, the monitor comprising: (a) a first and second momentary contact electrode for momentarily receiving ECG signals from the patient; (b) a detector circuit communicating with the first and second electrodes and executing a stored program to: (i) receive the ECG signals from the patient touching the first and second momentary contact electrodes; (ii) detect a likelihood that the patient is experiencing at least one of the arrhythmias; (iii) provide a first output signal to the patient if the likelihood is above a predetermined threshold and otherwise providing to the patient a second output signal indicating that the likelihood is not above the predetermined threshold; and wherein the electrodes are capacitively coupled.