Newsletter
With the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus announcement, Samsung announced that it was partnering with the University of California, San Francisco on a new app that can measure your blood pressure, called My BP Lab. It only works on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus using the heart rate monitor. The app is now available in the Google Play Store, however it is only available in the US as of right now.
The My BP Lab app is actually part of a three week study that UCSF is doing with Samsung and its Galaxy S9 users. The aim of this study, is to optimize the app to provide contextualized and scientifically informed feedback. This will allow users to better understand their levels of stress and blood pressure levels and help lower their blood pressure. The other aim here is to work to improve the accuracy of blood pressure readings. And this is why the app will ask you if you have a blood pressure cuff at home, so that you can compare its readings with the readings of the blood pressure cuff. To take part in the study, you do need to be 18 years of age, but the app does allow you to leave the study whenever you want to do so. That means that you don’t have to complete the full three weeks.
Setting up the app does take a bit of time, My BP Lab walks you through the requirements of the study, and also asks for your age, gender, weight and height. This information helps it determine whether your blood pressure is high or low, relative to your body size. After it’s all set up, you’ll go ahead and measure your blood pressure by sitting straight up, putting your finger over the flash (or the heart rate monitor) and then allowing it to measure. This is going to take about a minute or two. The first reading is going to be the calibration, after that, it’ll be able to tell if your blood pressure has gone up, and it’ll depict that in a percentage. For instance, in the picture above, you can see that my blood pressure went up 2%. The app is free, and the study is also free, but this does only work on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus for now.
