B-Secur Launches ECG Test System to Address Wearable Industry's Signal Quality Testing Gap

ETS gives wearable device manufacturers an objective, standardised measure of ECG signal quality at every stage of development - built on a decade of in-house ECG electrode and device characterisation data

BELFAST, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--B-Secur, a leader in advanced biosensing technology, today announced the launch of its ECG Test System (ETS), a reference-based performance test system that gives wearable device manufacturers an objective, standardised measure of ECG signal quality at every stage of product development, from first bench test to production quality control.

ECG is now a standard feature on consumer wearables worn by tens of millions of people. Yet there is no agreed method for testing whether the signal those devices capture is clinically reliable, and no shared benchmark against which manufacturers can validate their own performance claims.

Signal quality issues that go undetected during early-stage design frequently surface at late-stage validation, when the cost of correction — in time, programme delay, and potential re-spins — is at its highest. ETS provides a consistent, controlled testing methodology so engineering teams enter each development phase with evidence rather than assumptions.

The scale of this challenge was highlighted at an industry roundtable hosted in September by Blythe Karow of the Device Files, which brought together Prof. David Burke, Director of the Digital Health Institute at the Beacon Hospital in Dublin, Dr. Kenneth Civello, an Electrophysiologist and wearable device expert, and Sam Sheng of Google. The panel examined both the clinical risks posed by poor quality ECG signal and the practical difficulties manufacturers face in maintaining signal quality across the development cycle. ETS directly addresses the standardisation and benchmarking challenges the panel identified. The full discussion is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeZ75txSdPY.

“The industry has been solving the same problem differently for years. Every manufacturer running their own testing against internal standards with no common reference or way to compare results. ETS gives engineering teams an objective benchmark they can trust from the first material selection decision through to production quality control. This means no nasty surprises during the late-stage validation study.” Adrian Condon, CTO, B-Secur

ETS compares electrode materials and wearable devices through paired measurements across a characterised subject cohort. A defined protocol standardises acquisition variables so that performance differences can be attributed to the design under test with greater confidence. Each recording returns a 0–10 Signal Quality Score, supported by settle-time, beat-validation and noise metrics, assessed against a known reference at both subject and cohort level. The platform scoring engine is built on a decade of B-Secur laboratory results, drawing on the characterisation of over 300 electrode materials across wet, dry, textile, and metal substrates.

ETS is available in two variants. ETS Electrode is designed for material screening - B-Secur provides an electrode plaque test jig allowing manufacturers to rank electrode materials, coatings, finishes and geometries against a reference before a device prototype exists, so electrode and hardware development can run in parallel. ETS Device is designed for full device comparison. Manufacturers bring their approved reference device and the device under test, and ETS runs a head-to-head comparison across a characterised subject cohort, helping to isolate likely sources of performance degradation through controlled configuration comparisons and supporting noise metrics.

Each study delivers a structured report including individual subject results, candidate-to-reference comparisons, and a cohort summary with occurrence and worst-case analysis.

ETS is available now. For more information, visit b-secur.com.