by Stephen Rountree
Of the 250,000 Americans who die of cardiac arrest each year, 70 percent of them do so at home, where there’s no access to a lifesaving defibrillator.
Enter the WCD 2000, the world’s first wearable defibrillator. Electrodes in the chest-belt monitor the heart; if they lose the heartbeat, they signal the waist-mounted defibrillator to send a shock. Meanwhile, tiny capsules release an electricity-conducting gel onto the chest.
The first patients will likely be those who are temporarily at high risk for heart attacks, or people who don’t qualify for an implantable defibrillator.