Bye bye, blood pressure cuff: This new device measures BP on the go

In a new study, UIC researcher Benjamin Sanchez Terrones asked healthy adults to run, walk or bike while wearing a special smartwatch on their left wrists.

This smartwatch incorporates Sanchez Terrones' latest innovation: a cuffless, electrical way to monitor blood pressure throughout the day. Published in Nature Communications, the technology is designed to provide health information without disrupting daily life.

"This is a behemoth of work; a tour de force from my lab," said Sanchez Terrones, an associate professor in the College of Engineering. "Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but high blood pressure often goes undetected. Engineers refer to measuring blood pressure as a 'holy-grail problem.'"

That's because current blood pressure monitoring methods are not infallible, Sanchez Terrones said. Checking your blood pressure at a doctor's appointment only captures one moment in time - "like trying to guess the plot of a movie from a single screenshot."

Daily at-home testing paints a more realistic picture, but many patients have trouble operating an inflatable blood pressure cuff on their own. Measurements by cuff must be taken at rest, which does not reflect how patients move throughout the day. Cuffless technologies work well in theory but don't always account for daily activities and differences among patients.

"No matter how good the technology is, it needs to reflect reality and be usable for people," Sanchez Terrones said.

His fully wireless smartwatch monitors blood pressure and blood flow at the wrist. Via Bluetooth, the smartwatch streams data to a computer (a clinician's, for example), which collects data offline.

Equipped with stainless steel electrodes, the watch applies an imperceptible electrical current to the patient's wrist. Then, Sanchez Terrones uses a machine-learning model to convert the body's electrical response into measures of blood pressure and velocity. The model is guided by the laws of physics to ensure accuracy.

To test the new device, Sanchez Terrones recruited 77 healthy adults and 88 adults with hypertension or cardiovascular disease.

With promising results so far, the next step will be a clinical trial where participants use the technology in a real-world setting. The devices will also be evaluated in larger, more diverse groups and across longer-term physical changes in body temperature, dehydration or weight.

The University of Utah, where Sanchez Terrones conceived the idea before joining UIC in 2025, holds the intellectual property to this invention.

Albert Fabregas, a researcher in Sanchez Terrones's lab, contributed to this study.

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Jenna Kurtzweil

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Topics

blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular health, smartwatch