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Comment by eb0la | Hacker News Reader

This is a huge improvement against regular blood presure monitors (which are heavy, and nonportable).

If I remember well Lenovo smartwatches had a similar feature but they needed calibration for this to work.

Omron has the advantage they've been building blood pressure monitors for years and they know how to make medical grade devices (looks there's no need to calibrate anything).

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> This is a huge improvement against regular blood presure monitors (which are heavy, and nonportable).

Is the product reliable ? I am in the market for something like that but $500 for something that could just be an expensive gadget is hard to justify :/.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XM8XMO/

$25, reliable, 1.5 lbs shipped. I have this one (or a similar model by the same brand).

I have something similar in price but for my wrist and it is ballpark accurate (so up to about 5 off depending on many factors). But only when used as described on the correct wrist. Tested with my doctor and he showed the other wrist is highly inaccurate.

Good enough for home testing but that is about it.

The device I linked is an upper arm cuff, not a wrist device (measuring at the wrist is less accurate either way).

The reviews on the page suggest it's not quite up to a certain quality yet. It's an early adopter thing and probably will need some more iterations before it's viable for broader use.

If it works {{your first sentence}}.

Uh, regular blood pressure monitors are not heavy and are quite portable. They're just not wrist form-factor. I'm not sure what's compelling about having one strapped to your wrist.

>Uh, regular blood pressure monitors are not heavy and are quite portable. They're just not wrist form-factor.

That's the whole point. The parent's point wasn't that you need a U-HAUL to carry them, but that they're a bulky added device you have to carry and operate specially.

>I'm not sure what's compelling about having one strapped to your wrist.

Isn't it obvious? That you always have it with you, it can take automatic measurements periodically without a fuss, it's on a device that also does 5-10 other things (time, notifications, heart rate, step-meter, etc), and you can just forget about it.

> The parent's point wasn't that you need a U-HAUL to carry them, but that they're a bulky added device you have to carry and operate specially.

That's a very charitable reading of GP's statement. I mean, here's what GP said:

> This is a huge improvement against regular blood presure monitors (which are heavy, and nonportable).

Regular BP monitors are not heavy or nonportable in any objective sense; and claiming this product is a "huge improvement" implies existing monitors are relatively "hugely" more heavy or hugely more nonportable. That isn't true as a point of comparison, and what was I remarking on.

Withings new monitors are pretty small, obviously bigger than this watch but also super accurate https://www.withings.com/us/en/bpm-connect

What's the point of automatically taking wildly inaccurate measurements?

Who said that?

They say:

"HeartGuide is the first, ___clinically accurate___, wearable blood pressure monitor."

There's no way wrist BPs, taken automatically, will have any useful degree of accuracy. They're pretty useless under ideal conditions as it is.

Like "clinically proven," the term you emphasized is unregulated and means nothing to a consumer.

Well, we'll wait for the reviews.

The Apple Watch ECG has been shown to be very accurate.

No one expected otherwise. The things it's measuring are fairly easy to measure from the wrist (if you're able to account for noise).

There are hundreds of portable blood pressure monitors. Many of which are wrist based devices not much bigger than this Omron device. And others which are basically just the size of an upper arm cuff, which is much more accurate than a wrist based device.

I wouldn't say this is a huge win at all. For some reason it can't even store more than 100 measurements, which makes no sense for a fitness watch.

which are heavy, and nonportable

I have one that runs on AA batteries, is half the size of a snack size bag of chips, and feels like it weighs under two pounds.

It's not even new tech; I've had it for at least six years.

Yes but its still a pain to pack it up and carry it around

Can you show an example of a blood pressure monitor that you are talking about ? I am not a doctor, but I've seen my grandma use a very portable one for a decade now.

Edit: updated IANAD to I am not a doctor

Something like an Omron M6 is the sort of thing

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Omron-M6-Comfort-Pressure-Monitors/...

This one is 10% of the weight and has been available for almost 2 years

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Salter-Automatic-Irregular-Heartbea...

I have this. It's ok but you get wildly variable readings if you don't keep your forearm perfectly rested and flat on a surface. Even then it's going to vary a lot. Wrist based blood pressure readings are never going to be that precise unfortunately

For all wrist BP monitors the wrist must always be at the heart level, not flat on the table. It won't change the amount of noise in the measurements, but it will remove the bias.

> you get wildly variable readings if you don't keep your forearm perfectly rested and flat on a surface

I figure this will be true for Omron's watch too.

Both seem light and portable to me.

IANAD? Can we just use English ?

You can buy an Omron wrist BP monitor in a drug store today. It's cheap, lightweight, and portable. Accuracy however, is not very good in my experience when compared with an arm cuff and a stethoscope used by an experienced practitioner.

They are in the UK the brand that is recommended by GP's and Omron is used in the NHS for clinics

Most of the Samsung phones can measure blood pressure for the past few years and works in pretty much same accuracy as the heavy and non-portable ones.

I've been using Samsung phones for years. It can measure heartrate and blood oxygen saturation but I'm pretty sure it doesn't measure blood pressure.

the note/galaxy 9/10s can read bloodpressure.[0]

"Phones that can use their sensor: Galaxy S9 and S9+ Galaxy S10 and S10+ Galaxy Note9 Phones that need a Galaxy Watch Active or Galaxy Watch Active2: Note10, Note10+, and Note10+ 5G "

[0]: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00082868/

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