The FDA is notably snotty and humorless about wireless, in general.

I am deeply surprised that they would approve something that required a cellular connection to function. I have seen the FDA push back on wireless even when it was completely ancillary to the primary function or when the device had no ability to do anything to anybody.

I would be suspicious that a person did something--accidentally gave permission to the cell connection, for example. This is NOT an indictment of competence. LOTS of shit goes wrong when things are in crisis mode. Devices which are perfectly well designed for calm situations can be totally useless because the interface trips you up when amped on adrenaline.

This was in Europe though. I hear your point, but this was probably a main design decision. It's not a portable EKG for MD, it's for rescuers. They're trained for the average situation but they need a second opinion and the ability to transmit your EKG as-is to an actual doctor is probably very useful. Now the frailty of wireless I understand, but in this case it's a bit absurd. Considering a chart is 1000 x 32bit samples (uncompressed). You could almost tweet that today u_u.

Anyway, I wish I could discuss with people about the possibility of blending both models. I understand the economy of scales, but maybe some partnership between large mainstream electronics could give medical device suppliers special access to some standard, well rounded/tested at cheap prices even at low volume compared to say cellphones.