HP’s New Blood Pressure Monitoring Watch

By Andrew Liszewski

HP Singapore, in collaboration with local telco SingTel, medical device maker HealthSTATS Int’l and Frontier Healthcare have just started an 8 week long, 100 patient trial of their new Mobile Health Monitoring Solution. Now you might be thinking that you’ve seen fitness watches like this before, but you haven’t. Most watches that monitor your heart are only keeping track of your pulse, letting you know if you’re truly getting an effective workout. But HP’s new monitor uses technology developed by HealthSTATS International that actually lets the watch measure blood pressure or CASP, central aortic systolic pressure.

This measuring technique is actually considered a far more accurate indicator of a patient’s cardiac health because it measures pressure in the aorta, but until now it’s required invasive surgery. HealthSTAT’s non-invasive BPro EVBP Technology instead measures something called the pulse wave from a patient’s radial artery at the point of their wrist, and using proprietary algorithms is able to produce results as accurate as the surgical method. Of course HP’s implementation of the technology goes one step further, allowing a patient’s stats to be remotely monitored via cellular data networks so they don’t have to continually visit hospitals or clinics to have their BP measured.

[ PR – Checking your health around the clock ] VIA [ MIT Technology Review ]