Wearable and Flexible Devices for Cuff-less Blood Pressure Estimation and Monitoring: A Review

Abstract

Heart diseases still contribute as the highest cause of death globally. It is also well-known that hypertension and high blood cholesterol are the key risk factors for heart diseases. This emphasizes that more preventive efforts are urgently needed. One common preventive method is to conduct a 24-hour ambulatory setting for blood pressure (BP) monitoring. With this monitoring, the doctors can give the patients a more precise treatment/medication at the earliest stage before the disease develops into a much-worsening state. However, the established methods use cuff-based devices. This is indeed very inconvenient and painful for the patients. Hence, a cuff-less BP monitoring device and system becomes the ideal solution. Furthermore, our daily activities including habits and food/drink intake can also trigger the increase/decrease of BP. This where the use of wearable and flexible devices for BP monitoring plays an important role. Thus, we provide a minireview on how the BP can be estimated using cuff-less methods and also how the flexible materials crucially support the realization of wearable cuff-less BP monitoring devices and systems by providing more comfort to wear and more cardiovascular health assessment as well as more electronics functionalities.