Bluetooth Low Energy Enable iPhone Applications for Portable Medical Devices

New Blood Pressure Profile app to be demonstrated on CSR’s Bluetooth low energy devices at Mobile World Congress to showcase market opportunity for growing mHealth space.The BLE iPhone app demonstrates the transfer of blood pressure readings using the BLE Blood PressureProfile, while running on an example single-mode BLE device that could readily be incorporated into a blood pressure monitor. Every BLE applications  faces its own challenges relating to power consumption, data transfer requirement and constraints of the smartphone.

For mHealth, both local and wide-area communications are required and with most mobile phone operating systems providing native Bluetooth stacks, BLE is an ideal technology for integration.  BLE technology is designed for low peak current consumption, permitting operation via standard coin-cell batteries and battery life of up to one year. So treating the patient also be an normal way.

Cambridge Consultants, a firm that helps other companies design new products, has developed an example iPhone app for interfacing a blood pressure monitor with the smartphone using BLE.  The app currently talks to a dummy device that’s really just a Bluetooth radio, but the company says the feature can be integrated into pretty much any future BP monitors.