A framework for the integration and homogeneous management of electrocardiography formats

In recent years, a large variety of protocols and standards have been proposed in the context of digital electrocardiography. This multiplicity generates a clear lack of integration and interoperability in electrocardiogram (ECG) standardization. Some pairwise converters have been proposed and developed but such an approach is not costeffective, since it requires a large number of mappings. Therefore, to efficiently administer the various formats, some management systems are required. In this paper, a framework for the integration and management of the different ECG formats is proposed. This framework is a Java-based application comprising four main parts: a servlet, an applet, a database and a web page. The primary idea of this approach is to provide with converter classes to a central format. Then, since ECGs are stored in the same format, they can be homogeneously managed, stored and visualized.