A bracelet that can track blood pressure whether you are standing up, sitting, lying or even fast asleep could help in the fight against hypertension, its developers claim.
The Aktiia home blood pressure monitoring kit comes with a cuff, bracelet and partner app, which can constantly track blood pressure without a bulky device.
The Switzerland-based firm began work on monitoring blood pressure using optical sensors 15 years ago, and was ready to bring it to market in the spring of 2021.
It makes use of signal processing, to take real measurements against a baseline, rather than using artificial intelligence to ‘predict’ blood pressure levels.
Mike Kisch, Aktiia CEO, told MailOnline that having constant blood pressure measurements in all settings was a ‘game changer’ for doctors and patients.
It allows doctors to determine whether medication is working, and patients to see for themselves how lifestyle changes they make improve their blood pressure.
The kit is £199 from the Aktiia website, and is medically certified for use in seven countries in Europe, including the UK.
The kit is £199 from the Aktiia website, and is medically certified for use in seven countries in Europe, including the UK
The Aktiia home blood pressure monitoring kit comes with a cuff, bracelet and partner app, which can constantly track blood pressure without a bulky device
Aktiia says its goal is to ‘improve cardiovascular health by providing patients and physicians with a deeper understanding of their blood pressure patterns.’
The monitor is worn as a discreet bracelet that tracks blood pressure 24/7 automatically in the background of daily life, including when asleep.
It is designed to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension, which affects about 1.28 billion adults worldwide and is a leading cause of premature death.
‘Our point of view is that to be as accurate as possible, we have to be truly sensing and measuring an individuals blood pressure,’ said Mr Kisch.
They do this using real data ‘rather than using AI or machine learning to in effect guess what a persons blood pressure is,’ he explained.
When you first get the device it comes with an upper arm cuff, similar to a traditional blood pressure monitor, and a bracelet.
The cuff is used to create a baseline measurement of your blood pressure, that the system can then utilise to track blood pressure using just the optical sensor.
‘This is a highly regulated space, and unlike a lot of things a consumer wearable might measure, this is a critical input into the treatment of the world’s most prevalent chronic conditions.’
The data is used by the patient to determine how well they are staying within their target blood pressure range.
‘Equally, if not more importantly, there is a physician who might be prescribing medication based on these values.
‘That is where it diverges from a consumer wearable – a doctor won’t really use data from an Apple Watch as a basis for a treatment plan, but if they believe there is something else wrong they will require more exhaustive tests.’
Some doctors in Europe are already giving the product to patients, as it allows them to get a round the clock measurement of blood pressure, without the ‘white coat effect’, which is where blood pressure spikes in the presence of a doctor.
Having worn the device for the past month, you very quickly forget you are wearing it, and with a battery that lasts most of the month, its even easier to forget.
Aktiia says its goal is to ‘improve cardiovascular health by providing patients and physicians with a deeper understanding of their blood pressure patterns’
They use real data ‘rather than using AI or machine learning to in effect guess what a persons blood pressure is’
I have hypertension, and am on medication to treat my blood pressure, but there are also things I can do in terms of lifestyle, to improve.
Having the device, and seeing a continuous track of my blood pressure, allowed me to link different foods and activities, to my blood pressure level.
The firm has approval within Europe and the UK to sell the product to consumers, and is currently working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US.
It is widely available in seven countries, with tens of thousands of users capturing more than 20 million blood pressure readings in the past year.
‘We are targeting individuals themselves,’ explained Mr Kisch, adding they are also targeting researchers, carrying out hypertension studies.
‘For us, depending on the individual, you may buy this online, in a store at some point, and equally you may have the product given by the healthcare provider or insurer, who wants you to stay in range a larger percent of the time.
‘There is an incentive for them to provide you the product because it helps in that pursuit.’
The healthcare setting can also help provide wider data to doctors on patients healthcare – with only one per cent of hypertension patients currently given a bulky ambulatory blood pressure monitor.
‘They are just not utilised in any consistent way. One of the reasons doctors don’t like to use them is getting the 24 hour snapshot is useful, but has bias built into it.
‘What if it was a bad day, what if they were experiencing stress,’ he said.
With this device, the act of monitoring blood pressure has been ‘pushed into the background’ where users don’t have to think about it or even notice it is there.
The firm is working on updates to the product, making it much more clinical focused, including creating doctor friendly reports on blood pressure data.
‘As the product gets used in a grander scale in clinical applications, it needs to have a robust visible application and dashboard, and the product team is working on building out that dashboard, to release in the first half of this year.’
The monitor is worn as a discreet bracelet that tracks blood pressure 24/7 automatically in the background of daily life, including when asleep
Mike Kisch, Aktiia CEO, told MailOnline that having constant blood pressure measurements in all settings was a ‘game changer’ for doctors and patients
That will be for doctors, allowing them to remotely gauge the progress of patients, even see what time of day medication should be taken.
‘Right now, after they do the initial diagnosis and prescribe medication, they don’t get a lot of data from the patient, so the likelihood that the first time it will work is low, so now they get ongoing data to see if they need to modify treatment.
‘That is a game changer for the physician,’ explains Mr Kisch.
Data gathered by this device is fed into large scale cohort studies, with nine currently running or about to run around the world.
One is about the way patient engagement in hypertension management programmes increase when using these products and how a doctors decision making process improves.
A bracelet that can track blood pressure whether you are standing up, sitting, lying or even fast asleep could help in the fight against hypertension, its developers claim
A Swiss study is exploring the link between the intake of salt and blood pressure, and another from Australia on different medication for blood pressure.
The firm had 200 research proposals in the past year alone, due in part to the fact blood pressure is one of the core vital signs not widely or easily measured.
Mr Kisch said he expects devices like the Apple Watch and Fitbit will have blood pressure monitoring in the coming years, but it would be ‘consumer grade’.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if they do spot check, where you have to be relaxed and in a set position, but that isn’t far off what we do now.
‘We can measure when you are standing, seated, lying down, when your arm is over your head, at your heart, below, and when you are asleep.
‘To the physician the comparison of night versus day is a game changer in the ability to prioritise patients by their risk profile, as about 50 per cent of people with high blood pressure have an abnormal circadian variance.’
That is where at night your blood pressure doesn’t drop compared to your daytime average, and that could increase your risk of heart attack and stroke.
‘If a doctor sees that marker on a patient, they may treat that patient differently than they would without the data,’ including the time they take their medication.
‘They can shift the timing of medication to where it has an optimal impact on blood pressure control,’ explained Mr Kisch.
The firm are currently working on allowing the data from the bracelet to be imported into other apps, such as Apple Health, to allow for wider comparisons, alongside other readings such as step count and food intake.
With this device, the act of monitoring blood pressure has been ‘pushed into the background’ where users don’t have to think about it or even notice it is there
‘For the consumer portion of this experience, one of my favourite features is time within range, and an evolution will be whether you are in a good or bad percentage.
‘We can also then identify drivers keeping you out of the healthy range, and what changes can be implemented to keep you in the healthy range.’
Currently it just allows you to input the medication you take, dosage, what time of day and what time you go to sleep and wake up, but they plan to add more annotations in the future, including around diet.
‘Ultimately if I can provide to you, was I in my range today and what differences were there and what changes can I make, is a powerful way to give people simple guidance.’
A doctor might say eat less, sleep better and take medication – giving very broad instructions to improve blood pressure, but Mr Kisch said with data they can provide a handful of very simple solutions, and real time feedback.