Management of cardiac data transmissions

Abstract

A medical alarm communications system comprises a pager like device to be kept near a patient. The pager like device communicates medical alerts regarding the patient to a remote central station, which can provide therapeutic and/or diagnostic assistance by communicating to the pager like device. When the pager like device determines that an alert should be sent to the central station, it attempts to establish communication with the central station according to a primary communication protocol. If this attempt is unsuccessful according to some predetermined criteria (e.g. too much time has elapsed before communication is established), then the pager like device generates a message to the patient indicative of the failure, and The attempts to establish communication with the central station according to a secondary communication protocol.

1 . A medical device for providing a medical alert in response to the occurrence of a medical event comprising:
 a receiver configured to receive data pertaining to a patient's condition;   an alert module configured to review the data to determine whether to issue an alert signal to a central station;   a transmitter operatively coupled to the alert module;   a patient alerting device operatively coupled to the alert module;   wherein the alert module is configured to attempt to establish communication with a central station through the transmitter according to a primary communications protocol if the alert module determines that an alert signal should be generated, and wherein the alert module is further configured to determine whether attempts to establish communication with the central station according to the primary communications protocol have failed according to specified failure criteria and to take remedial action in response to such failure;   wherein the remedial action includes activating the patient alerting device to indicate that the primary communications protocol has failed, and attempting to establish communication with the central station through the transmitter according to a secondary communications protocol.