The high number of incidence and low survival rate to hospital discharge renders in-hospital cardiac arrest (I-HCA) a significant public health problem. Electrocardiogram (ECG) as a diagnostic tool plays an important role in detection of many heart complications however; its role as a predictor for I-HCA is not fully investigated. ECG predictors for I-HCA may have an impact on the I-HCA survival rate by assisting clinicians to identify patients at risk of cardiac arrest and deliver appropriate treatments. Previous studies have shown the heart rate as an I-HCA predictor, however to measure heart rate few steps need to be taken. Most ECG recordings from hospitals continuous monitoring system (telemetry) are available in the paper format that makes the analysis cumbersome and more likely prone to errors due to the manual measurement. The objective of this study was to facilitate the measurement of the heart rate prior to I-HCA by digitizing and using signal processing techniques.
