Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have developed an electronic tattoo for continuously monitoring blood pressure.
Blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure, but the methods to do it outside of the clinic passively, without a cuff, are very limited, said Deji Akinwande, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin and co-leader of the project.
The most common mobile health monitors, smartwatches, dont give accurate or sustained blood-pressure readings because their light-based sensors can be disrupted when the watch moves around, or by darker skin tones.
The graphene-based e-tattoo is stretchy and sticky, and can be worn comfortably for several hours. The device shoots electrical currents into the skin, then measures the bodys response, known as bioimpedance. Changes in blood pressure affect blood volume, which affects bioimpedance.
The sensor for the tattoo is weightless and unobtrusive. You place it there. You dont even see it, and it doesnt move, said Roozbeh Jafari, a professor of biomedical engineering, computer science and electrical engineering at Texas A&M and the other co-leader of the project. You need the sensor to stay in the same place because if you happen to move it around, the measurements are going to be different.
A paper on the device was published this week in Nature Nanotechnology.
