B-Secur has launched the ECG Test System (ETS), a reference-based method for measuring how well a wearable captures an ECG signal. The company describes it as a combination of hardware tools, a defined test protocol and a proprietary scoring engine that holds the acquisition variables constant, so the performance difference a team measures comes from the design under test rather than from the test setup. ETS is available now.
The problem it targets is that ECG is now standard on consumer wearables worn by tens of millions of people, but there is no agreed method for testing whether the captured signal is clinically reliable, and no shared benchmark for manufacturers to validate their own claims against. B-Secur's argument is about when problems surface: signal-quality issues missed in early design tend to appear at late-stage validation, where the cost of fixing them, in time, programme delay and potential re-spins, is highest.
Each recording returns a 0-to-10 Signal Quality Score rated against a known reference, with higher meaning closer to that reference. Settle-time, beat-validation and noise metrics support the score, and results are assessed at both the subject and cohort level to expose average performance, variability and subject-specific limitations. B-Secur says the scoring engine is built on a decade of its own laboratory results and the characterisation of more than 300 electrode materials across wet, dry, textile and metal substrates.
ETS comes in two variants matched to programme stage. ETS Electrode uses a B-Secur plaque test jig to rank electrode materials, coatings, finishes and geometries against a reference before a device prototype exists, so electrode and hardware work can run in parallel. ETS Device runs a head-to-head comparison: a team brings its approved reference device and the device under test, and ETS compares them across a characterised subject cohort, using controlled configuration comparisons and noise metrics to isolate likely sources of performance degradation. Each study produces a structured report with individual subject results, candidate-to-reference comparisons, and a cohort summary including worst-case analysis.
For quality and test engineers on wearable programmes, the draw is a documented, repeatable acquisition and analysis method in place of ad hoc bench comparisons, with that evidence in hand before a validation study begins. "Every manufacturer running their own testing against internal standards with no common reference or way to compare results," said Adrian Condon, CTO of B-Secur, framing ETS as an objective benchmark from the first material-selection decision through to production quality control.
