Patent ID: 7395109

Claim:
In a method of determining characteristics of a patient's heart, the steps of: providing signals indicating atypical characteristics of a patient's present heartbeats, providing signals indicating atypical characteristics of previous heartbeats of the patient, comparing characteristics of the patient's present and previous atypical heartbeats to select one of the patient's previous atypical heartbeats closest in characteristics to the characteristics of the patient's present atypical heartbeats, providing atypical heartbeats of third parties, each of the atypical heartbeats of the third parties identifying an individual atypical heart problem different from heart problems identified by other atypical heartbeats of the third parties, and comparing the selected one of the patient's previous atypical heartbeats and the atypical heartbeats of the third parties to select an individual one of the atypical heartbeats of the third parties closest in characteristics to the characteristics of the selected one of the patient's previous atypical heartbeats and to identify the individual heart problems of the patient; and diagnosing heart problems of the patient on the basis of the results of the comparison.