Deji Akinwande, Roozbeh Jafari, and UT Austin colleagues have developed an electronic wrist tattoo that can be worn for hours and deliver highly accurate, continuous blood pressure measurements.
This can provide a much clearer picture of a person’s health than occasional, cuff based measurements at a physicians office, or at home.
Smart watches are not able to successfully measure blood pressure, as they move, are far from arteries, and light-based measurements are often not accurate in people with dark skin or large wrists.
As Akiwande said, “blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure” and as Jafari said, “taking infrequent blood pressure measurements has many limitations, and it does not provide insight into exactly how our body is functioning.”
A constant, passive measure, through a tattoo, during normal activity, stress, sleep, or exercise can deliver thousands of measurements more than any existing device.