niceBP

Blood pressure is one of the most important vital signs in humans. The recording and evaluation of blood pressure is of outstanding clinical importance, e.g. in intensive care monitoring and in the diagnosis of functional disorders of the autonomic nervous system, as well as in non-clinical settings, e.g. in the care of heart failure patients. However, the methods available today for measuring blood pressure have specific disadvantages in terms of informative value, accuracy and/or conditions of use. For example, invasive measurement via catheter is considered the most accurate measurement. However, invasive measurements are only possible in the rarest of cases and are always associated with risk. Cuff measurement is a user-friendly alternative and is extremely widespread. However, the method can only be used intermittently (at intervals of a few minutes) and "only" records the diastolic, mean and systolic blood pressure, i.e. not a complete blood pressure curve. This has disadvantages for various applications and excludes certain analyses altogether. For example, close intensive care monitoring is not possible in this way. Against this background, methods for the continuous non-invasive determination of blood pressure (CNIBP) are of great interest. However, current solutions for CNIBP are disruptive, inaccurate and/or prone to failure. Ongoing research activities, commercial developments and the revised standard for blood pressure monitors, which explicitly takes CNIBP procedures into account for the first time, underline the interest in and need for CNIBP.

The interdisciplinary niceBP project aims to implement a wearable for CNIBP on the upper arm. Highly sensitive pressure sensors serve as the technological basis. The project is developing innovative signal processing methods that determine blood pressure using multivariate pressure measurements and automated, individualized tissue models. In addition to the methodological developments, niceBP also focuses on the design, implementation and characterization of actuated structures for the application of the pressure sensors, as the primary placement and permanent fixation are crucial for the function of the proprietary solution and patient comfort. niceBP validates its own solutions in three applications with different clinical backgrounds as part of clinical feasibility studies (intensive care medicine, sleep medicine, nephrology) and thus creates ideal conditions for the scientific and commercial exploitation of the project content.