All well for first internet heart patient

A Tauranga man who underwent a ground-breaking heart operation at Waikato Hospital on Friday has been discharged and is now resting at home.

Neville Hawker was fitted with an electronic defibrillator which has the dual function of sending messages to cardiologists over the internet.

He is the first patient in Australasia to be fitted with a home monitoring device, which reports on his heart performance over the GSM digital network.