WILMINGTON — David Wagenseller spoke to the Wilmington Rotary Club which meets at noon about his business venture — the EKG Glove

Wagenseller noted that he has been in the medical device sector for over 10 years. Immediately before returning to Wilmington, he worked in Houston, selling spine implants used by neurosurgical or orthopedic spine physicians. It required him to be in the operating room for those surgeries. He later sold that business and moved back to Ohio.

Wagenseller stated that upon returning to Ohio, he found a product called the EKG Glove and sent it on to a doctor friend of his. Following up a few weeks later, the doctor agreed that this technology could be game-changing.

IneedMD, based in New York, owns the product patents and shepherded the product through the years of FDA approvals.

In a traditional EKG, 10 electrodes are placed strategically on the patient and connected to an expensive and large machine by a trained and certified technician. Improper placement or other errors can lead to a false positive reading in roughly 25 percent of the EKGs administered, he said. This leads to more testing; in many cases – unnecessary testing.

Because the electrode pack is sensitive, and somewhat delicate, it is hard to effectively clean, and can harvest infectious disease that are resistant to antibacterial solvents. Setting up this test takes time and the availability of a technician, machinery, etc.

By using the EKG Glove, the sterile pack can be opened and applied to the patient by anyone but the patient therefor eliminating the need of a certified technician. The wires draping across the patient are also reduced from 10 down to 1 therefore creating a 90 percent less chance of getting a hospital-based infection. Using a wireless device, the information is sent to the cloud and the results are available within 60 seconds.

While they initially believed the market for this product would focus on hospital use, alternate markets have been much quicker to adopt this device. Skilled Nursing Facilities are soon to be mandated to provide cardiac monitoring services which were once not available without a large upfront capital expenditure.