At the recent AXA PPP Health Tech & You awards, British startup Kardia Mobile progressed to the final.  The company provide an add-on for a smartphone that allows the user to check their heart rhythm and learn within 30 seconds whether medical attention is required.

It’s a fascinating approach, but one that is arguably more in keeping with daily routines is being developed by researchers at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU).  They’re working on modified bathroom scales that can monitor your health for a range of conditions.

“Hospitals are fully equipped with advanced technologies for diagnosing illnesses and critical conditions, but it is too expensive to use this equipment for everyday health monitoring. On the other hand, people do not have many devices for personal health monitoring at home, and these devices could be very practical”, the team say.

Daily routine

Most bathrooms have a set of scales to help us check our weight, and it’s common for modern scales to examine things such as body fat and muscle mass, but the KTU device aims to take things one step further and turn them into health monitoring devices.

It’s already known that body composition scales can be augmented with handlebar type devices that are not dissimilar to those developed by Kardia Mobile.  The KTU team have developed a system that can detect arterial conditions by the pulse arrival time from heart to feet.

“We are measuring the speed of blood pulse wave: the faster the speed, the stiffer the arteries, which, in turn can already warn about the development of arteriosclerosis, and the latter can be the cause of increased blood pressure and other conditions”, the team say.

“When a person has final stage of renal insufficiency syndrome, he or she has to undergo the dialysis several times a week. As kidneys cannot manage keeping the balance of microelements in the organism, the risk of potentially life threatening conditions, such as increased potassium concentration in blood, i.e. hyperkalemia, arises”, they continue.

As such, the team have been working with medical professionals to integrate the capability of recognizing hyperkalemia into the scales.  They’re developing functionality that can alert the users doctor when this is detected, and they may therefore move planned dialysis forward.

It’s an interesting technology, and the team are confident they can add the capability to monitor over 20 different health parameters, all in a device that’s less complex than your average smart phone.