Assistant Professor Alex Mariakakis
Assistant Professor Alex Mariakakis wants to make blood pressure assessment more accessible by leveraging an existing and commonly used technology — earbuds.
Mariakakis, a ubiquitous computing researcher, has been named the recipient of a 2023 Seed Grant from TRANSFORM HF, an Institutional Strategic Initiative at the University of Toronto that focuses on digital innovation for heart failure care.
He and his team have been awarded a $70,000 for their project, “Accessible Blood Pressure Estimation with Earbuds,” which explores the use of earbuds to increase the ease of at-home blood pressure measurement and remove the cost of a blood pressure cuff.
“The nice thing about using earbuds for blood pressure monitoring is that people wouldn’t need to do anything differently than what they would normally do with them. The idea is that you would just wear the earbuds, the in-ear microphone would collect audio and transmit it to your smartphone using Bluetooth, and the phone would analyze the heart sounds to determine your blood pressure. That information could be shown to you, or it could be delivered to your care team,” explains Mariakakis to TRANSFORM HF.