Finger-Wearable Blood Pressure Monitor.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Cardiovascular Technology
• Wearable Health Devices

Background:

• Hypertension is a major global health concern, leading to significant mortality.
• Regular blood pressure monitoring is crucial for early detection and management of hypertension.
• Current monitoring methods can be inconvenient, limiting user adoption and adherence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel fingerwearable device for convenient and painless blood pressure measurement.
• To enable frequent daytime and nocturnal monitoring of arterial blood pressure.
• To assess the accuracy of the device against established clinical standards.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a two-dimensional capacitive tactile sensor array positioned adjacent to the digital artery.
• Employed a pump-driven pneumatic bladder to apply a pressure sweep against the finger.
• Collected digital artery pressure waveform data during the sweep for blood pressure estimation.
• Conducted a clinical study (N=97) for algorithm development and accuracy validation.

Main Results:

• The device demonstrated favorable accuracy in estimating systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
• On the test set, the mean error for systolic blood pressure was 0.9 mmHg (SD 6.9 mmHg).
• The mean error for diastolic blood pressure was -3.2 mmHg (SD 7.0 mmHg).

Conclusions:

• The fingerwearable device provides accurate and non-invasive blood pressure measurements.
• Results meet or exceed international standards for blood pressure measurement accuracy.
• This technology has the potential to increase user adoption of regular blood pressure monitoring.