Virtual ECG — http://ecg.southwales.ac.uk — was an interactive simulation teaching the accurate recording of 12-lead Electrocardiographs (ECGs). This simulation taught users to precisely place electrodes on a patient and attach each of the 12 cables correctly to successfully record an accurate ECG; inaccurate ECGs lead to misinterpretation and clinical misdiagnosis. Using a database of fragments of ECG recordings, the system was capable of generating more than six trillion unique ECGs. Virtual ECG was retired at the end of 2020.
In 2012 Virtual ECG was nominated for a British Universities Film & Video Council 'Learning on Screen' 2012 award in the 'Courseware and Curriculum' category. In August the same year Virtual ECG was a semi-finalist in the Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA)
in the 'Innovation of Interactive Media in Education' category. ADAA is
a global competition, which in 2012 attracted nearly 5,000 entries across
16 categories.
Virtual ECG was built, using Adobe Flash, at the University of South Wales by Barry Richards and Peter Lewis.
We have had to retire this website because, as of January 2021, Adobe will no longer be providing support for the Flash Player plug-in. Consequently, web browsers will not support the Flash Player plug-in in new versions after this date. This means that any security issues with Flash Player will be unaddressed. While we would like to leave these sites accessible for posterity, it's not acceptable for us to publish a website which may expose users to security threats. Therefore, Virtual ECG has been removed.
Should you wish to still access these Virtual ECG, despite any Flash Player security issues, then you can use an old version of a web browser and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to access an archived version of Virtual ECG using the Wayback Machine.