Friday 13/March/2026 – 02:58 PM
A team of researchers has succeeded in developing a small, non-invasive wearable device that relies on optical sensors and artificial intelligence technologies to track blood pressure continuously and accurately.
Developing an AI-powered device to monitor blood pressure around the clock
According to the College of Arts and Sciences website, the study showed that this innovation offers a practical solution to one of the biggest health threats in the world, namely high blood pressure, which silently increases the risk of heart disease, strokes, and kidney problems without showing obvious symptoms.
The new device addresses the major shortcomings of current measuring tools, as checking blood pressure for most people is limited to frequent doctor visits or the use of traditional devices at home, which are merely quick snapshots that fail to monitor vital changes that occur throughout the day or during sleep. On the other hand, continuous monitoring, which reveals hidden patterns and provides early warnings, previously required surgical medical procedures in hospitals that are not compatible with daily life.
Assistant Professor in the University’s Department of Applied Physical Sciences and study leader, Wubin Bai, confirmed that the goal was to design an accurate and wearable tool on a daily basis, noting that monitoring blood pressure with the same ease as tracking steps via smart watches will bring about a radical shift in the methods of detecting this disease and preventing cardiovascular diseases.
The innovative technology relies on a mechanism known as photoplethysmography, the same technology used in smart watches to emit green light through the skin and detect changes in blood flow.
During the study, co-authored by former research associate Tien Nguyen, the team placed one sensor on the finger and another on the toe to measure the time it takes a pulse wave to travel between the two points, a property known as pulse wave velocity.
The machine learning model then combines these readings with other key information such as height, weight, and heart rate to estimate blood pressure and arterial stiffness with pinpoint accuracy. This dual approach bypasses the problems of older devices that relied on a single sensor paired with an EKG, which suffered from poor accuracy because they failed to account for the small time delay between the heart’s electrical signal and the actual pulse of the blood.
The researchers tested the device on 25 young, healthy volunteers, and the results were very promising, as the innovative system’s blood pressure estimates were very close to the standard reference device used in research, with a difference of only about one millimeter of mercury, a small difference that meets international guidelines for the accuracy of medical devices.
The innovation also succeeded in capturing natural changes in blood pressure and arterial stiffness during various activities, including sleeping, walking, cycling, and even typing on a keyboard. During sleep, the device tracked how blood pressure and pulse wave speed gradually decreased as participants moved into deeper stages of rest.
In this context, Nguyen stressed that blood pressure is not a fixed condition, but rather is constantly affected by stress, sleep, activity, and diet, stressing that capturing these fluctuations in real-world environments will help doctors make better treatment decisions, and enable patients to take control of their health before complications worsen.
