How common is high blood pressure? About 1 in 5 adults.[1]
Effects of untreated high blood pressure: loss of mental function, atherosclerosis (so heart attacks and strokes), and vision loss are some of the big ones.[2] It's probably the leading cause of death these days.
So the market for a cheap, reliable and convenient diagnostic device is very large, and wide open at this point.
I know several folks who worry about managing their blood pressure from hour to hour, this would be as useful for them as no-stick blood sugar monitoring is for diabetics
The main non-invasive way blood pressure is measured by a doctor is by putting a cuff around your upper arm. The cuff has a pump attached to it. The doctor inflates the cuff until the pressure cuts off the blood flow in the main artery of your arm. Then the doctor slowly deflates the cuff and listens for when the blood starts flowing again. The pressure that this happens at is your systolic blood pressure (the larger number). Then they keep deflating and listening until the sound stops. That's your diastolic blood pressure (the smaller number).
A digital blood pressure monitor effectively does the same thing, but without the need for a trained professional. It still has the cuff and the pump. To measure the blood pressure it has to pump and cut off the blood flow to some extent. This obviously makes it inconvenient - it's uncomfortable, it's fairly large, you have to put it around your arm (or wrist or finger), and the pump is usually noisy. The new device seems to be an improvement in these categories.
The main improvement here is size though. Blood pressure monitors usually go around your upper arm and the machine that houses the pump and the electronics is even larger than the cuff. This makes taking frequent measurements difficult. There are smaller devices that go on your wrist, but their accuracy tends to not be great. Even the standard digital blood pressure monitors suffer from inaccuracy.
If the device in the article does what it says and is actually close to as accurate as a regular digital blood pressure monitor, then hopefully we will get more blood pressure data on more people. This should hopefully allow doctors to figure out better treatment plans. However, I find it unlikely that it will match the accuracy of the commonly used digital blood pressure monitors.
In my situation, I have to do home dialysis and need to measure my BP before and after treatment every day. I feel this device would be quicker to use and won't trigger the anxiety that some people feel with a normal BP machine squeezing on their arm. That anxiety can skew your BP numbers considerably.
It's rumored that the next Apple watch will have an infrared glucometer. It would be great if somewhere down the road was a pressure monitor, to complete the basic health check.
If one could get a wearable that monitored blood pressure like a heart rate monitor on watch, that would be quite helpful to see trends and dangerous spikes.
Effects of untreated high blood pressure: loss of mental function, atherosclerosis (so heart attacks and strokes), and vision loss are some of the big ones.[2] It's probably the leading cause of death these days.
So the market for a cheap, reliable and convenient diagnostic device is very large, and wide open at this point.
1. https://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/cardiov...
2. https://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/cardiov...