Design of a portable continuous systolic blood pressure monitoring kit with built-in low and high blood pressure early warnings

Abstract

About one in three adults in the United States have high blood pressure but high blood pressure itself usually has no symptoms. The prevalence of hypertension in Malaysians aged 30 years and above was 42.6%. The majority of cases (64%) in this country remain undiagnosed. Only 26% of Malaysian patients achieved blood pressure control (<140/90 mmHg). Now days, many people have high blood pressure for years without knowing it. Uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure or kidney failure. This is why high blood pressure is often called the "silent killer." The only way to tell if you have high blood pressure is to have your blood pressure checked. Blood pressure is often measured using a device called a sphygmomanometer, a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. Almost all the existing manual or automatic measuring techniques of blood pressure are based on this principle, which is not convenient for continuous monitoring of blood pressure. The objective of this study is to develop a portable continuous blood pressure monitoring system using an electrocardiography (ECG) sensor and a pulse sensor. Two methods were used to measure blood pressure continuously. The first method measures blood pressure continuously based on Heart Rate (HR) and the second method is based on Pulse Wave Transit Time (PWTT). Both methods were separately implemented for different techniques to measure systolic blood pressure (SBP). The techniques that were used to model the relationship between the PWTT or HR data to systolic blood pressure are linear regression model, non- linear regression model and neural network model. Neural network model gave the smallest value of mean of error and standard deviation of error for measuring blood pressure based on PWTT or HR. These errors are acceptable and relatively small compared to the standard accuracy, which should have a minimum mean of error value of 6 mmHg with a standard deviation of error of ±10mmHg. The subjects that were involved in portable BP monitoring kit testing are normal blood pressure subjects, low blood pressure subjects and high blood pressure subjects. All the data were taken about five minutes for each subject and the results were monitored by medical cardiologist/doctor or nurses. The accuracy of the SBP data from portable continuous BP monitoring kit was validated using sphygmomanometer. The results indicate that the developed portable BP system is adequate to be used for monitoring or measuring systolic blood pressure continuously. Warning system was developed in this portable BP monitoring kit. The warning system is generated based on blood pressure value and trend of increasing or decreasing of systolic blood pressure values. The warning is given in form of alarm. The alarm will be “on” when the systolic blood pressure value goes more than 140mmHg (High Blood Pressure) or less than 100mmHg (Low Blood Pressure) or if the SBP increasing or decreasing trend in more than 5mmHg for each 30 seconds.