Write a program for monitoring a patient’s heartbeat and calculating the average over the last 10 detections.

Designing a Patient Heartbeat Monitoring System for HealthTech Inc.

To monitor a patient's heartbeat and calculate the average over the last 10 detections, we'll implement a real-time data processing system using a circular buffer for efficient storage and calculation of the moving average.

Introduction

The challenge at hand is to develop a robust system for monitoring patient heartbeats and calculating a rolling average. This task is critical for HealthTech Inc.'s patient monitoring platform, requiring a solution that balances real-time performance, accuracy, and scalability. I'll outline a comprehensive approach that addresses both the immediate technical requirements and long-term product considerations.

Step 1

Clarify the Technical Requirements (3-4 minutes)

Before diving into the solution, I'd like to clarify a few key technical aspects:

1. Looking at the existing system architecture, I'm wondering about the current data ingestion pipeline. Could you provide insights into how heartbeat data is currently collected and processed?

   Why it matters: Determines if we need to build a new system or integrate with existing infrastructure Expected answer: Data is collected via wearable devices and sent to a cloud-based system Impact on approach: Would influence our choice of data processing and storage solutions

2. Considering the critical nature of health monitoring, I'm curious about the real-time requirements for data processing and display. What's the maximum acceptable latency for updating the average heartbeat?

   Why it matters: Affects our choice of processing algorithms and infrastructure Expected answer: Updates should be available within 1-2 seconds of new data Impact on approach: May require stream processing techniques for low-latency calculations

3. Regarding scalability, how many patients do we expect to monitor simultaneously, and what's the projected growth rate?

   Why it matters: Influences our architecture design for horizontal scaling Expected answer: Currently monitoring 10,000 patients, expecting 50% year-over-year growth Impact on approach: Would necessitate a highly scalable, distributed system architecture

4. From a regulatory standpoint, are there specific data retention or privacy requirements we need to consider in our design?

   Why it matters: Affects our data storage and processing strategies Expected answer: HIPAA compliance required, with data retention for 7 years Impact on approach: Would necessitate secure, compliant data handling and storage solutions

Assumptions:

• The system will receive heartbeat data as discrete events
• We need to calculate and store the average for each patient individually
• The solution should be designed for cloud deployment for scalability