Wireless chest wearable vital sign monitoring platform for hypertension

Abstract

Hypertension, a silent killer, is the biggest challenge of the 21^st century in public health agencies worldwide [1]. World Health Organization (WHO) statistic shows that the mortality rate of hypertension is 9.4 million per year and causes 55.3% of total deaths in cardiovascular (CV) patients [2]. Early detection and prevention of hypertension can significantly reduce the CV mortality. We are presenting a wireless chest wearable vital sign monitoring platform. It measures Electrocardiogram (ECG), Photoplethsmogram (PPG) and Ballistocardiogram (BCG) signals and sends data over Bluetooth low energy (BLE) to mobile phone-acts as a gateway. A custom android application relays the data to thingspeak server where MATLAB based offline analysis estimates the blood pressure. A server reacts on the health of subject to friends & family on the social media - twitter. The chest provides a natural position for the sensor to capture legitimate signals for hypertension condition. We have done a clinical technical evaluation of prototypes on 11 normotensive subjects, 9 males 2 females.