A smartphone application toward detection of systolic hypertension in underserved populations

High systolic blood pressure (BP) is the most important modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Managing systolic hypertension is especially difficult in underserved populations wherein access to cuff BP devices is limited. We showed that ubiquitous smartphones without force sensing can be converted into absolute pulse pressure (PP) monitors. The concept is for the user to perform guided thumb and hand maneuvers with the phone to induce cuff-like actuation and allow built-in sensors to make cuff-like measurements for computing PP. We developed an Android smartphone PP application. The ‘app’ could be learned by volunteers and yielded PP with total error < 8 mmHg against cuff PP (N = 24). We also analyzed a large population-level database comprising adults less than 65 years old to show that PP plus other basic information can detect systolic hypertension with ROC AUC of 0.9. The smartphone PP app could ultimately help reduce the burden of systolic hypertension in underserved populations and thus health disparities.