Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based blood pressure monitoring system

In this paper, we successfully developed a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based blood pressure monitoring system, which integrated a homemade blood pressure measuring device and a smartphone. The device uses single BLE System-on-Chip to process the algorithm of blood pressure measurement and data transmission. Through the newest Bluetooth Low Energy technology, device can send measured results to the smartphone. Therefore, users can get the information of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and pulse rate on the smartphone. Besides, the format of data transmission packet is based on the standard Blood Pressure Profile specification from Bluetooth SIG. The homemade blood pressure monitor has high compatibility to communication with other devices using the same Bluetooth profile. The accuracy of pulse rate and blood pressures are verified through the CuffLink simulator. The accuracy of pulse rate is -1.13 ± 0.52 beats, the accuracy of systolic blood pressure is 0.69 ± 1.63 mmHg, and the accuracy of diastolic blood pressure is 0.20 ± 1.02 mmHg. In clinical trials, the systolic blood pressure average difference between our method and auscultatory method is 2.66 ± 2.71 mmHg. The diastolic blood pressure average difference between our method and auscultatory method is 3.42 ± 4.42 mmHg. As a result, this device has high accuracy for measuring blood pressure and pulse rate.