blood pressure The Samsung Galaxy S9 in collaboration with UCSF can now measure blood pressure

[captain_to_fire]

Sources: University of California San Francisco

 

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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and UC San Francisco have announced the launch of My BP Lab, a jointly developed smartphone research app to help users monitor their blood pressure and stress levels and obtain personalized insights for improving their daily health.

 

My BP Lab leverages an innovative optical sensor available on the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+, announced today, to provide users with richer, more accurate information about their health status. This optical sensor is built into the device, and allows blood pressure to be directly measured by the smartphone without any external hardware. Users joining a program led by UCSF researchers will receive personalized, on-demand information regarding their stress and blood pressure levels throughout the day. One aim of the study is to optimize My BP Lab to provide contextualized and scientifically informed feedback, so users will be able to gain a better understanding of their stress and blood pressure levels and manage their health more effectively. The study also further improves the accuracy of the blood pressure readings, by gathering data from thousands of users in real-world settings.

 

Users who open the My BP Lab app will be invited to join a three-week UCSF research study that will track stress and how emotions experienced throughout the day affect your wellbeing. Participants will report on their behavior, including sleep, exercise, and diet, and will use the smartphone’s sensor to make blood pressure measurements throughout the day. Participants could learn, for example, what day of the week their stress levels were the highest, or how their sleep quality affected their blood pressure levels in the morning.

 

Which begs the question, how is the GS9's new optical sensor differ from the previous heart rate scanners of older Galaxy phones from GS5 to GS8 and how accurate could it be in comparison to a digital or aneroid sphygmomanometer. I know for a lot of people in the forum especially younger ones may not care about this but this is good news for people currently suffering from hypertension regardless of age or inherited risk factors. The CDC reported in 2015 that for ages 45-64, heart disease is the second leading cause of death and surprisingly for people aged 15-34, heart disease is the fifth leading cause of death. If UCSF and Samsung can fine tune the new optical scanner of the GS9, I think it would be greatly beneficial for people on the go to monitor their blood pressures and resting heart rates without fumbling with a blood pressure cuff. 

 

At the moment, there are IoT devices that can sync blood pressure with an existing smartphone but it still requires a cuff like Nokia's BPM+ (formerly Withings) which syncs data with an iPhone or Android phone via Bluetooth.

The MyBP Lab app will be available on the Google Play Store on March 15 in the US and will be available for people aged 18 and beyond. Hopefully they roll out the app to other countries as well. I can see people with high risk for heart disease using this like Type 2 Diabetics and overweight/obese individuals using this to improve their health. Personally I prefer the aneroid sphymomanometer because I think its a skill everyone should know and it's actually easy to do but it's interesting that tech companies are seeing improving health as a new business model. So at the moment we have:

• Apple with Stanford University to fine tune their HealthKit API in the Apple Watch which saved someone's life from a debilitating and potentially fatal heart attack [here] 
• Google is creating a machine learning algorithm which can predict heart disease outcomes by analyzing opthalmoscope results [here]
• Nokia has been in the health related IoT devices for years with their acquisition of Withings 
• And now Samsung in collaboration with UCSF in a study to determine just how accurate the new optical sensor of the Galaxy S9

Which makes me wonder where is Microsoft or Amazon in the health related tech research? It would be nice to ask Alexa "what's my heart rate during my HIIT workout"?

[ARikozuM]

I don't mind this becoming the norm as long as healthy habits are rewarded (like bonus gift cards for healthy eating and exercise) rather than punished (like gaming for six hours #guilty). Luckily Ambetter Health gives up to $250 for eating and exercising well. Having the ability to keep track of a patient's medical over the long-term can be very valuable for early diagnosis and possibly life-saving.

[captain_to_fire]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

I don't mind this becoming the norm as long as healthy habits are rewarded (like bonus gift cards for healthy eating and exercise) rather than punished (like gaming for six hours #guilty). Luckily Ambetter Health gives up to $250 for eating and exercising well. Having the ability to keep track of a patient's medical over the long-term can be very valuable for early diagnosis and possibly life-saving.

I think the now defunct Nike+ Fuelband does give animated rewards and badges for being active. There are actually apps that pay money by being active https://www.verywellfit.com/walking-apps-that-earn-rewards-3434997