Patent ID: 7587237

Claim:
A method of monitoring a cardiac biological signal using electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, comprising: receiving, at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, the cardiac biological signal that includes information describing events, wherein events comprise periods in time when an information content of the cardiac biological signal is of increased relevance to a particular purpose and the events are demarcated by periods of time that are not of increased relevance to the particular purpose; at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, classifying the events into two or more categories based on cardiac conditions indicated by the information describing each event; at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, determining a measure of merit of the information describing each event, wherein the measure of merit embodies a severity of the cardiac condition associated with the event and an amount of noise in the information describing the event; comparing, at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, the measure of merit of information describing each event with a first merit criterion; transmitting, for medical purposes, information describing a first proper subset of the events in a first of the categories that have merits meeting the first merit criterion from the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation to a remote medical receiver, wherein the remote medical receiver is not located at the same site at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation; at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, discarding information describing a second proper subset of the events in the first of the categories that have measures of merit that fail to meet the first merit criterion; comparing, at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, the measure of merit of information describing each event with a second merit criterion; transmitting, for medical purposes, information describing a third proper subset of the events in a second of the categories that have measures of merit meeting the second merit criterion from the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation to the remote medical receiver, wherein the second category differs from the first category and the second merit criterion differs from the first merit criterion; and at the electrocardiographic monitoring instrumentation, discarding information describing a fourth proper subset of the events in the second of the categories that have measures of merit that fail to meet the second merit criterion.