Welcome to Cypress ECG

My name is Pat Shuff. I am one of the co-founders of the Cypress ECG Project. Currently there are two of us running this project with many others that contribute and help us along the way. We are a non-profit organization that is focused on testing of student athletes. In the US each year about 300 athletes die from sudden cardiac death. We are focused on reducing this number by providing simple and affordable testing that can be done at schools instead of a doctors office. We have been running this project for five years in the Cypress Fairbanks school district just outside of Houston, Texas.

In January, my co-founder convinced me to quit my profitable full time job and focus my energies on this project. Since then I have been focused on calling every school in Texas trying to make this project more successful. Today we have 16 school districts using our testing procedures. Given that there 1237 school districts and 4.8 million students in the state, we have a lot of work to do.

My background is in engineering and sales. I have worked for computer companies, universities, and oil and gas companies. I have multiple degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. My co-founder, Tom DeBauche, is a Cardiologist. I focus on the business aspects of the business and Tom focuses on the medical side of the equation. Hopefully the two of us can make this work and save more lives.

In the past 5 years we have tested close to 10,000 students. Of these students, we have found 10 that would have had severe complications some time in their life leading to potential death. Of these, 8 have had corrective surgery or are now on medications. The remaining two are recent and have been referred to a local physician for follow up. If you assume that each test cost $10 (which is our goal) we have effectively found each instance at a cost of $1000. This is close to the cost of an ambulance ride. Our goal is to drive this cost down and show that for a few dollars per child, we can efficiently and effectively save lives and not cost the schools or parents significant amounts of money.