Keeping Tabs on Hypertension

An innovative wearable device puts Tufts on the front lines in fighting high blood pressure.
Mohan Thanikachalam

During his cardiovascular surgery training at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami in 2004, Mohan Thanikachalam recalls that at least once a week in the emergency room, he would see a patient in his early thirties or even late twenties with aortic destruction from undiagnosed high blood pressure.

The next step? An expensive, somewhat risky surgery with a long recovery time. “That’s the thing—just taking a pill would have controlled those issues,” said Thanikachalam, now a research assistant professor of public health and community medicine at the School of Medicine.

Almost 1.4 billion people worldwide have high blood pressure, including more than 100 million in the United States, and hypertension is the leading cause of heart disease and stroke across the globe.

But occasional cuff readings at the doctor’s office—which can be affected by patient anxiety and other factors—aren’t cutting it when it comes to effective maintenance and early intervention. Research has shown that continuous monitoring, including during sleep, is a better predictor of cardiovascular disease, while pressure variability over time can point to end-organ damage and dementia.

With all this in mind, Thanikachalam and a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have spent three years developing a wearable Tactile Blood Pressure Imager (TBPI) with funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Read More