We’re proud to announce two independent global research and validation studies which integrate the Biospectal OptiBP™ blood pressure measurement app. Currently underway in four low-resource countries, the studies center on the routine measurement and monitoring of blood pressure, assessment of hypertension during pregnancy, and enable global field testing and validation of Biospectal’s OptiBP smartphone app and data platform integration with the WHO’s Digital Antenatal Care module, following WHO SMART guidelines and built on the WHO Open Smart Register Platform (OpenSRP). 

Dr. Anuraj Shankar of University of Oxford, U.K., and Lead Investigator for Community Health at the Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit, and the Summit Institute for Development in Indonesia had this to say: “The ability for anyone to assess blood pressure accurately with a readily available device such as a smartphone opens the door to personal monitoring of many acute and chronic medical conditions. It’s a massive leap forward in technology toward empowerment for wellness, and crucial in the post Covid-19 world. The synergy with other point-of-care tests and the transition to digital health globally means optimal care for pregnant women experiencing hypertension, and will lead to more healthy mothers and healthy babies.”

The first independent study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is underway in three countries — South Africa, Tanzania and Bangladesh — and is concentrated on routine blood pressure measurement and monitoring as well as hypertension disorders during pregnancy. 

The second independent study in Indonesia is being conducted with the Summit Institute for Development (SID) in collaboration with Ona Kenya Limited and is funded through Grand Challenges Canada’s Saving Lives at Birth initiative, with additional backing from USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and the HRP Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction. The study centers on hypertension disorders during pregnancy, including chronic hypertension, preeclampsia-eclampsia, preeclampsia superimposed on chronic hypertension and gestational hypertension. Findings from the two studies will be available in the first half of 2022.

Biospectal can scale our modern, medical-grade, easy-to-use blood pressure measurement and monitoring OptiBP technology globally with extreme efficiency to any country, at any time. These studies further our ability to transform the global network of smartphones into a connected, clinical-grade blood pressure monitoring platform — democratizing access and bringing the power of remote patient monitoring to people and communities worldwide. Read more about the studies here. 

We are looking for users to help us test our revolutionary smartphone blood pressure solution. If you would like to become an OptiBP™ beta user, click here.