Premature death and disability from sudden cardiac arrest continue to be a serious public health burden. Electrocardiography (ECG) is a ubiquitous vital sign health monitoring method used in the healthcare systems. The early detection of abnormality in ECG signal for cardiac disease leads to timely diagnosis and prevents the person from death. Normally the surgeons have to study a large amount of ECG data to search for abnormal beat in ECG. If the surgeons fail to note the abnormal cycles that are very less in number, it leads to fatigue. In the proposed research work, an intelligent ECG digital system is designed to interpret these abnormal signals which reduce the tedious work of interpreting ECG. The proposed work monitors the heart beat continuously in a convenient manner and with maximum accuracy for diagnosing. The ECG signals are acquired in real time and amplified through an Instrumentation amplifier. The resulting signals are processed for the cancellation of noise through a low pass filter and notch filter. Further processing of these signals in the microcontroller detects the abnormalities of cardiac arrest. The result is communicated through GSM which reduces the burden of the doctors to a greater extent. These signals are stored in the Secure Data (SD) card to have a complete history of the signals before and after the occurrence of the cardiac event. The proposed research work combines the capabilities of real-time monitoring of ECG signals and the abnormal symptom-reporting systems. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.