Pacemaker Club: Device Memory Storage

Device Memory Storage

by Bob New
2019-05-17 17:52:40
General Posting
860 views
1 comments

Hello, all:

I joined this forum to gain support and understanding of what happened. You see my father-in-law recently passed and i have questions that cannot get answered. My main question is...for how long will the pacemaker / defribrulator device retain memory and does it over-ride after a certain period of time? If anyone has knowledge nad can help i would be greatly appreciative. I am not going to share details of his passing on a general post but would like message with anyone that has knowledge of this process. If you can help PLEASE send me a private message. Words cannot say thank you enough...

1 Comments

Theoretically

by Theknotguy - 2019-05-17 21:29:17

Theoretically the pacemaker memory keeps everything from its initial startup. However when the techs do their readings they often go ahead and erase the readings. So that means everything could be erased since the past reading.

The next "however" gets into forensics. Since the memory on the pacemakers is embedded in the unit, the question is if the memory is totally erased or does the "erase" program erase the memory or does it just erase the pointers to the last reading? I've heard of the units being sent back to the manufacturer after being taken out for additional data retrieval which means the memory isn't totally erased. But I don't know what information is permanent and what is erased.

Next question is how you read the pacemaker memory? These things don't run off the Windows' operating system so you just can't go to the local PC shop and get someone to pull off the data from the memory. Actually I think they have a proprietary operating system. So the next question then is who reads it and what information do they want you to have? Question then goes into lawyers and the legal system. And, if you've been watching the news lately, you've seen where even though people are under court orders they go ahead and choose to ignore them anyway. Quite, as the Brits say, a sticky wicket.

Your first start will be to go back to the manufacturer and see what they say. Hopefully they will be forthcoming and not tell you the information is proprietary.