It is difficult to measure blood pressure outside of a clinical setting. The gold standard for cuff-based devices that give a reading has been for a long time. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure readings at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options.
"Blood pressure is the most important sign you can measure, but the methods to do it outside of the clinic are very limited," said Deji Akinwande, a professor in the Department of electrical and computer engineering at UT Austin.
If left unaddressed, high blood pressure can cause serious heart problems. Traditional blood pressure checks only measure a single data point and can be difficult to capture.
A professor at Texas A&M and one of the co-leaders of the project said that taking infrequent blood pressure readings doesn't give insight into how our body is functioning.
The continuous monitoring of the e-tattoo allows for blood pressure to be measured at any time of the day or night.
Recent years have seen major leaps in the field of mobile health monitoring. The devices use metallic sensors to read the light coming through the skin.
Leading watches are not ready for blood pressure monitors. It's difficult to deliver accurate readings because the watches slide around on the wrist. Light-based measures can be difficult in people with larger wrists.
One of the strongest and thinst materials in existence is graphene, and it is used in the e-tattoo. The atoms are arranged in such a way that they are 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-
It makes sense for e-tattoos to be used as a vehicle for mobile blood pressure monitoring because they are made of stretchy material that is comfortable to wear for a long period of time.
The tattoo sensor is light and easy to use. It's placed there. You don't see it and it doesn't move. If you change the location of the sensor, the measurement will be different.
The device shoots an electrical current into the skin and then looks at the response of the body. Changes in blood pressure are related to changes in blood volume. The team had to use a machine learning model to analyze the connection to get accurate blood pressure readings.
There isn't a viable solution on the market for cuff-less blood pressure monitoring. It's part of a larger push in medicine to use technology to untether patients from machines while collecting more data wherever they are, allowing them to go from room to room, clinic to clinic and still get individualized care.
The data can be used to create a digital twin to model the human body to predict and respond to treatments over time.
More information: Roozbeh Jafari, Continuous cuffless monitoring of arterial blood pressure via graphene bioimpedance tattoos, Nature Nanotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01145-w. www.nature.com/articles/s41565-022-01145-w Journal information: Nature Nanotechnology
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