Happy Birthday – Willem Einthoven!

A Dutch doctor and physiologist born On this Day 159 years ago. He invented the electrocardiogram (ECG), a device for measuring electrical activity in the heart. Einthoven was convinced that the ECG would be hugely valuable for clinical diagnosis.

He identified different patterns from healthy people and those with heart conditions such as arrhythmias, heart blocks and ventricular hypertrophy – enlarged walls of the heart’s main chambers.

The medical community was initially sceptical about the technique’s utility, but Einthoven’s work was eventually recognised with a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1924.

The medical community and SOMNOmedics owe a lot to Dr Einthoven. You can read more about Dr Einthoven here: