Patent ID: 7509160

Claim:
A method for detecting potential arrhythmia comprising the steps of: sensing a patient's beat-to-beat heartbeat intervals; storing said beat-to-beat heartbeat interval data; normalizing said beat-to-beat heartbeat interval data; analyzing each piece of normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat data in comparison to a stability criteria to determine if said data indicates stability or instability of the patient's heart rhythm; tracking the number of normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat data indicating stability and the number of normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat data indicating instability; and outputting a warning to the patient if the number of normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat data indicating instability exceeds the pre-set criteria, wherein said stability criteria for classifying a normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat interval as stable is approximately between 0.95 and 1.05, and wherein said pre-set criteria for outputting a warning to the patient is when the number of normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat intervals indicating instability exceeds the number of normalized beat-to-beat heartbeat intervals indicating stability.