High blood pressure (hypertension) silently claims around 9 million deaths globally each year. People living with hypertension require lifelong vigilance of their blood pressure levels, to prevent serious health problems like stroke or a heart attack. In theory, hypertension can be managed effectively with medication, but in practice less than 50% of medicated patients manage to reach healthy blood pressure levels.

The most common method for monitoring blood pressure is using a cuff that takes periodic measurements. However, this approach fails to give the full picture of the patient’s condition, as it only offers periodic snapshots that can’t capture important fluctuations that may happen during the day. Knowing these fluctuations is key to finding the best treatment plan for each patient.

Continuous blood pressure monitoring offers a more efficient way to manage hypertension and can better inform individual medical treatments. However, current existing methods for continuous blood pressure measurement are either too invasive – such as inserting a catheter on a patient’s artery in hospital settings – or lack clinical accuracy, which is the case for many wearable devices like watches. Other existing technologies that allow for direct blood pressure measurement are unsuitable for long-term use; leaving patients with few practical and accessible options to manage their condition.

The need for a continuous blood pressure monitoring method that is both practical, clinically accurate and suitable for long-term use, has brough the SMARTSHAPE consortium together to develop a solution.