Samsung funded study lets users measure their blood pressure via Galaxy smartphone and watch

Samsung’s cutting-edge blood pressure feature highlights the power of popular tech gadgets to improve the reach of medical research.

Samsung is giving its customers the ability to measure and track their blood pressure with their Galaxy smartphone or Galaxy Active Watch.

The technology is very much in its infancy but highlights the potential for our gadgets to deliver life-changing capabilities to monitor and improve our health and how popular devices can extend the reach of medical research.

However, at this point it’s simply a study that users can opt into via an app rather than a certified feature that will be coming to all Samsung devices.

To get your blood pressure readings, you need to download the new MyBP Lab 2.0 app in the Google Play Store or Galaxy Store. The research app was jointly developed with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) whose researchers are running the study, which is partly funded by Samsung.

If you’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S10 or Active Watch and want to check it out, you’ll need to provide information to make sure you’re eligible for the study.

Participants will be prompted to measure their blood pressure three times a day and answer a few questions for three weeks. You will also be asked to complete “cognitive tasks” during some of these check-ins, which you can skip. Smartphone users take their measurement by placing the finger on the sensor on the back of the handset.

“Information from each blood pressure reading is included in an ongoing study at the university which is designed to better understand how stress and emotions can affect the human body,” Samsung says.

The information provided throughout the study is encrypted and anonymised.

Dr Wendy Berry Mendes from UCSF is leading the study and says prevention is the key to reducing blood pressure-related conditions, including heart disease.

She is a psychophysiologist, a branch of physiology concerned with the relationship between mental and physical processes. That gives you some sense as to what this study is geared towards.

The technology behind this is essentially “a low intensity infra-red light source that we’re able to measure blood volume in various tissue”, she explained to news.com.au.

Samsung approached her about five years ago to develop an optic sensor like this that they could embed in a wearable device.

The sensor measures changes in blood volume, and Samsung uses a proprietary algorithm to translate that data into your approximate blood pressure.

If Samsung ends up keeping the technology in future devices, and it gains approval from medical regulators regarding its reliability, then it will be a seriously useful capability to have on a wearable device or smartphone. But at this point, the Korean tech giant basically just wants to use customers as guinea pigs.

Samsung first introduced the capability with its Galaxy S9 last year and, after some delay, the updated MyBP Lab app means users can do the same with the GalaxyS10 and its Galaxy Active smartwatch.

A number of premium gadgets including the Apple Watch have the ability to measure heart rate through electrical signals from the body, but Samsung’s blood pressure measurement is a pretty unique feature.

“Heart rate can be relatively useful, but it’s not diagnostic in terms of telling you about your health outcome,” Dr Mendes said. “Blood pressure on the other hand is more tightly linked to health.”

Assessing hypertension, or noticing more blood pressure variability throughout the day, “gives us a better window in how their health is developing.”

According to the Google Play Store, the app has more than 50,000 installs, but reviews left on the page have been mixed, with some complaining about glitches and weird readings.

Dr Mendes called it a “researcher’s dream” to have access to this kind of data. But she admitted the readings weren’t always going to be perfect.

“There’s error in every measurement, there’s error when you go to the doctor’s office to get your blood pressure,” she said.

Originally published as Samsung funded study lets users measure their blood pressure via Galaxy smartphone and watch