Nature’s DPJ Digital Medicine publishes global health study results that demonstrate the enormous promise of Biospectal’s OptiBP mobile app to help patients and pregnant women worldwide in low-resource and rural settings monitor and manage high blood pressure; Cuffless, optical smartphone blood pressure solution Biospectal OptiBP furthers Biospectal’s mission to democratize access to hypertension management to people worldwide
Biospectal SA, the remote patient monitoring and biosensing software company, today announced the publication of global health study results published in Nature’s NPJ Digital Medicine of the first independent research and validation study to use Biospectal’s mobile blood pressure monitoring app, OptiBP™ in low-resource urban and rural settings. Collected from hundreds of general population and pregnant population participants, the results reinforce Biospectal OptiBP’s enormous promise as an easy-to-use, accessible, connected, clinical-grade blood pressure monitoring platform with the potential to transform the global network of smartphones into a connected, clinical-grade blood pressure monitoring platform — democratizing access and helping people worldwide of all income levels to better monitor and manage their blood pressure. View a short video of how OptiBP works.
The Biospectal OptiBP app calculates pressure using pulse wave analysis through a smartphone’s camera lens. All users need to do to obtain a reading is place their index finger on the lens of the smartphone camera for approximately 20 seconds. Biospectal’s OptiBP app was identified in the WHO Compendium of Innovative Health Technologies along with Grand Challenges Canada as an innovative solution for low-resource health systems.
Hypertension is the number one risk factor for death globally and affects an estimated 1.4 billion people. High blood pressure is especially prevalent in underserved countries, with two-thirds of those affected residing in these regions. Additionally, hypertension disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are a significant contributor to maternal morbidity and mortality. To ensure positive pregnancy outcomes, the World Health Organization’s Digital Antenatal Care module strongly advocates for blood pressure monitoring as an essential component of antenatal care.
“Hypertension is a growing global epidemic, and there has long been a need for a digital tool that can help people around the world manage this condition,” said Biospectal CEO and co-founder Eliott Jones. “This research shows that OptiBP has the potential to transform lives and improve global health by offering people a simple yet painstakingly reliable way to track their blood pressure. Democratizing access to accurate blood pressure reading will ultimately enable early diagnosis and treatment, which will not only save and improve lives but also lessen the strain on the global healthcare system.”
The study was completed in 2021 across three sites in South Africa, Tanzania, and Bangladesh among general populations, and in South Africa among a pregnant population. Researchers collected and verified accuracy of all blood pressure measurements. The inclusion of pregnant populations was meant to assess innovations to improve management of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. The study was done in collaboration with HRP, Johns Hopkins University-JiVita Bangladesh, Ifakara Health Institute, South African Medical Research Council for pregnancy populations, and Digital Health and Innovations at WHO’s Science Division across Asia and Africa.
“Biospectal provides a powerful screening tool to get hypertensives into the medical system globally,” said Dr. Fred St. Goar, M.D., Vice Chairman of Fogarty Innovation and adjunct professor at the University of Global Health Equity. “Validating the effectiveness of paradigm shifting technologies like OptiBP requires ensuring that they are designed for ease-of-use, tested in context and used in an equitable way. This maximizes their impact and potential to leverage technology in democratizing health care access.”
The observational validation study compared blood pressure measurements taken by two independently trained nurses on a standard auscultatory cuff with blood pressure measurements taken by a smartphone application. The research team used a software version that blinds research nurses and assistants to the blood pressure values generated by the application.
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