Add-On Soft Electronic Interfaces for Continuous Cuffless Blood Pressure Monitoring

Continuous monitoring of arterial blood pressure is clinically important for diagnosing and managing cardiovascular diseases. Soft electronic devices with skin-like properties show promise in various applications, including the human-machine interface, the Internet of Things, and health monitoring. Herein, the use of add-on soft electronic interfaces addresses the connection challenges between soft electrodes and rigid data acquisition circuitry for bioimpedance monitoring of cardiac signals, including heart rate and cuffless blood pressure is reported. Nanocomposite films in add-on electrodes provide robust electrical and mechanical contact with the skin and the rigid circuitry. Bioimpedance sensors composed of add-on electrodes offer continuous blood pressure monitoring with high accuracy. Specifically, the bioimpedance collected with add-on nanocomposite electrodes shows a signal-to-noise ratio of 37.0 dB, higher than the ratio of 25.9 dB obtained with standard silver/silver chloride (Ag/AgCl) gel electrodes. Although the sample set is low, the continuously measured systolic and diastolic blood pressure offer accuracy of -2.0 +/- 6.3 mmHg and -4.3 +/- 3.9 mmHg, respectively, confirming the grade A performance based on the IEEE standard. These results show promise in bioimpedance measurements with add-on soft electrodes for cuffless blood pressure monitoring.