A patient data capture and processing system comprises: a programmable, platform medical device comprising at least one patient sensor interface； a processor coupled to said sensor interface and to a communications interface； programmable memory, coupled to said processor. The memory is programmable via the communications interface to define a plurality of different patient sensing functions to implement, in software, a plurality of different medical devices. A patient medical device controller comprises a further communications interface coupled to the communications connection； a processor； memory, coupled to said processor, storing signal processing code to retrieve the medical device data from one or more of the programmable platform medical devices via the communications connection, to filter clinically significant events from said retrieved medical device data to detect clinically significant events, and to output the filtered data for one or both of storage and review by a physician.
