Optoelectronic Blood Pressure Monitoring
January 31, 2012 | Terry Sharrer
TLT Sensor for BP Measurement
This piece only peaks curiosity, but it tells of a British company, Tarilian Laser Technologies (Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England) developing a cuffless, optoelectronic blood pressure sensor that can take BP readings from any part of the body via a sapphire laser. The description and video do not tell how the device actually works, though it might be guessable. We’ll follow this until it’s clear that a true breakthrough is in the making. MORE
Image Credit: Tarilian Laser Technologies
Harry Wood
Do you have to understand how something works before you accept it is revolutionary?
From the TLT website:
it won the 2007 US LSA Technology Showcase award,
it has passed global regulatory trials :AAMI SP10 2002 and AAMI SP10 2009
and Dr Art Tucker, Principal Clinical Scientist and Vascular Researcher at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London said: “The TLT sensor is a highly novel promising new technology that will have a large and positive impact in this field. It is an exciting and powerful new development in vascular science and has created a new state of the art in blood pressure measurement. It will no doubt be of great value both in hospitals and primary care as well as at home for the consumer, and offers a new paradigm in vascular biometrics.”
Chuck Juhl
This is very interesting, although I believe that the concepts was patented back in 1977 (US4063551 A). So if this device has passed regulatory trials (FDA??) where are the devices? I attend most of the medical device tradeshows on both U.S. coasts, as well as subscribe to a significant number of medtech publications, and I have yet to see a device on the market incorporating this technology. Scanadu, with its allegedly upcoming “Scout” mhealth device alludes to using this technology or a very similar technology but that project is more than a year behind schedule.
So what has come of this? Why no opteoelectronic blood pressure monitors on the market yet?