Braille Blood Pressure Interpreter for Home Blood Pressure Measurement for Visually Challenged Individuals

Abstract

Hypertension has slowly secured its place as the severest disease burden in the world among Global Burden of Diseases (GBD). Hypertension management programs which are employed to control the disease have identified Home Blood Pressure Measurement (HBPM) to be the most efficient blood pressure monitoring tool to effectively control hypertension. This paper presents an innovative, low cost and user friendly universal technological solution for the visually challenged community who are seeking hypertension management programs without compromising the independency and privacy with regard to sensitive medical data. In place of an exclusive and high cost blood pressure meter with Braille output, an external USB compatible tactile interpreter has been proposed and implemented. Systolic and diastolic readings isolated using a commercially available Device Monitoring Software, verifies that such a device is indeed realizable with a micro-controller based tactile feedback system especially designed for this purpose.