AliveCor, founded by Dr. David Albert, is the company that introduced reliable and useful ECG monitoring to consumers. Their products, which operate as basic single-lead ECG devices, have been cleared by the FDA to be able to detect cardiac arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation, tachycardia, and bradycardia. They have been quite limited still, as the power of ECG really lies when more leads are used and an array of simultaneous tracings can be reviewed to help identify a pathology.

Single leads ECG is intuitively simple, as the user only needs to hold onto a device with both hands, creating a one lead circuit. Having more leads generally requires wires to collect voltage readings between different points on the body. AliveCor is now introducing another first, a newly FDA-cleared six-lead ECG that doesn’t have any wires.

The KardiaMobile 6L resembles a large USB memory stick and it has two electrodes on one side and one electrode on the other. During an ECG recording, the user puts fingers on the pair of electrodes on one side, as with AliveCor’s previous devices, but the third electrode is made to come in contact with the skin around the ankle. This creates the necessary circuit to provide the I, II, II, aVL, aVR, and aVF ECG leads.

The tracings can be easily passed onto one’s cardiologist or simply looked on in amazement, as something like this was previously only really possible with a large clinical device. It’s being made available for pre-order for a reasonable $149.