Increased data quality in home blood pressure monitoring through context awareness

A range of recommendations exists on how to obtain a valid blood pressure. With the blood pressure devices currently available it cannot be verified whether a user is actually following these recommendations or not. This paper reports on the findings from a feasibility study on ubiquitous sensing of user behavioral context during blood pressure monitoring in the home setting. A prototype system using a context-aware chair-cover is evaluated through laboratory experiments and user evaluation. Results indicate that relevant user-context can be successfully monitored. Findings may lead to better user guidance and increase the quality of data available to caretakers.