Background - While Arterial Hypertension affects 1 out of 3 people worldwide, there is no
widely accessible and comfortable system for people and patients to monitor their blood
pressure themselves out of the hospital. We developed a smartphone application to measure
blood pressure via the camera of any smartphone on the market. The technique is using an
algorithmic-based estimation of the diastolic and systolic blood pressure from the analysis of
the pulse waveform generated by the contraction of the heart and conducted through the arteries
at the tip of the finger.
Methods - This optical blood pressure monitoring (OBPM) technology has been tested in a
measurement campaign of 55 healthy voluntaries, comparing this new technology to the noninvasive
blood pressure monitoring’s gold standard, which is the sphygmomanometer.
Measures were made during resting state and during an effort.
Results - The OBPM technology analyzed 449/637 (70%) blood pressure measurements and
showed a concordance rate of 102% and 105% for respectively the resting systolic and diastolic
blood pressure and an average of 98% and 96% for respectively the effort systolic and diastolic
blood pressure.
Conclusion - This study indicates that with some changes to increase signal acquisition and
other validation studies, this optical technology could be used in a near future as a blood
pressure monitoring device.