Week 7

This week, my progress is focus on the problems created by blood pressure devices. From my research, I have found several information discussing the matter of blood pressure measurement quality between two types of blood pressure devices. The devices are Mercury Sphygmomanometer and  Electronic Blood Pressure Monitor. Both of the devices explain their function and reliability on doing measurement to the patient whether done by qualified health workers and the non-health workers. this part is still in progress and will be updated soon.

Problem Statement

           

Population monitoring and screening of blood pressure is an important part of any population health strategy. Qualified health workers are expensive and often unavailable for screening. Non-health workers with electronic blood pressure monitors are increasingly used in community-based research. This approach is to compared blood pressure measurement taken by non-health workers using electronics devices against health worker using mercury sphygmomanometers. This matter were pointed to statistic of Global Health Action website issues on the “blood pressure measurement by non-health workers using electronic blood pressure monitor devices.

For information, there were two types of blood pressure device were used these day. This device is Mercury Sphygmomanometers and Electronic Blood Pressure Monitor. Furthermore, the problem is always at the sources of error in measurement of blood pressure are attributing to both the device and the operator. It is needed to validate the combination of the device and the operator. The target is everyone can do the blood pressure measurement independently.

Based on the statistics, mercury sphygmomanometer is the best used by qualified health worker instead of regular people. Considering to the Mercury Sphygmomanometers, the table below will explain more about the efficiency and accuracy of both types of blood pressure devices by doing several measurement. The result is respectively taken by health workers and non-health workers. (Diastolic and systolic blood pressures were recorded twice by each data collector, on left arm only. Between 30 seconds and 1 minute elapsed between repeated measurements to minimize venous congestion.)

From the table; the value is taken four times means T1-T4. The measurements are depending on the timing and the device or operator used. It was generally consistent with a classification of blood pressure in the desirable range. 

 

However, the similarities of result values are little compared to the differences found at the table measurement. With respect to the systolic maximum and minimum values, the mercury devices operated by health workers have lower values than the electronic devices operated by non-health workers, but all have similarities in means and medians. For the diastolic values, the electronic devices record lower mean and median values than the mercury devices (~5mmHg), and also recorded lower maximum values.                                          



reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_pressure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphygmomanometer
http://www.globalhealthaction.net/index.php/gha/article/view/14876/html 
http://www.davidgregory.org/blood_pressure_monitors.htm
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11539/1/Accuracy-of-a-Wrist-Blood-Pressure-Monitor.html

Week 6

E-mail : mohidx@ovi.com

In this week, my task is to at least making a draft of proposal report draft, what I have done on progress is about the abstract and introduction. For the problem statement, I have to do some more research on the blood pressure facts and statistics.Below is the report draft I have achieved to make:-

Abstract                                                                                                                     

Blood pressure, sometimes referred to as arterial blood pressure, is the pressure exerted by circulating blood upon the walls of blood vessels, and is one of the principal vital signs. During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure. The blood pressure in the circulation is principally due to the pumping action of the heart. The measurement started at systemic arterial pressure measured at person’s upper arm and is a measure of the pressure in the brachial artery, major artery in the upper arm. To perform a measurement, a method called oscillometric is used. The air will be pumped into the cuff to be around 20 mmHg above average systolic pressure (about 120 mmHg for an average). After that the air will be slowly released from the cuff causing the pressure in the cuff to decrease. As the cuff is slowly deflated, the tiny oscillation in the air pressure of the arm cuff will be measured. The systolic pressure will be the pressure at which the pulsation starts to occur. The microcontroller is used to detect the point at which this oscillation happens and then record the pressure in the cuff. Then the pressure in the cuff will decrease further. The diastolic pressure will be taken at the point in which the oscillation starts to disappear.

Introduction

My final year project is to design and build a portable blood pressure monitor device that can measure a user's blood pressures and heart rate through an inflatable hand cuff. The device is consisted of three main parts: external hardwares (such as cuff, motor, valve, and LCD), analog circuit, and microcontroller. The analog circuit converts the pressure value inside the cuff into readable and usable analog waveforms. The microcontroller samples the waveforms and performs analog to digital conversion so that further calculations can be made. In addition, the microcontroller also controls the operation of the devices such as the button and LCD display. Since I have the word 'portable' in our title, for sure all of the components are put together in one package which allows a user to take it anywhere and perform a measurement whenever and wherever he/she wants. It is undeniable that nowadays people are more aware of the health conditions. One of the most widely used methods to test the health conditions of an individual is to measure his/her blood pressures and heart rate. I am very concerned about their health, decided to work on this subject matter because we would like to build something that is useful and useable in real life. A person’s blood pressure is expressed in terms of the systolic pressure over diastolic pressure and is measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg), for example 140/90. 

Below is reference ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_pressure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphygmomanometer
http://www.globalhealthaction.net/index.php/gha/article/view/14876/html

Comment as anonymous