Poster Presentation: a2 National Symposium 2025
Title: VibroBP: Calibrationless Smartphone BP Monitoring using Vibrometric Force Estimation Authors: Colin Barry, Tatsuo Kumamoto, Yinan Xuan, Ava Fascetti, Amparo Averbuj, Edward J Wang
Publication: Oscillometric blood pressure measurements on smartphones using vibrometric force estimation
Authors: Colin Barry, Yinan Xuan, Ava Fascetti, Alison Moore, Edward J Wang Abstract This paper proposes a smartphone-based method for measuring Blood Pressure (BP) using the oscillometric method. For oscillometry, it is necessary to measure (1) the pressure applied to the artery and (2) the local blood volume change. This is accomplished by performing an oscillometric measurement at the finger's digital artery, whereby a user presses down on the phone's camera with steadily increasing force. The camera is used to capture the blood volume change using photoplethysmography. We devised a novel method for measuring the force applied of the finger without the use of specialized smartphone hardware with a technique called Vibrometric Force Estimation (VFE). The fundamental concept of VFE relies on a phenomenon where a vibrating object is dampened when an external force is…
Award: Don Norman Design Award 2024 – Special Recognition
Billion Labs Inc was honored with a DNDA24 Special Recognition for "Reducing Barrier to Access Hypertension Screening Globally." What they said: Billion Labs Inc. is a startup company whose mission is to transform the billions of smartphones in everyone’s pocket to screen for critical health conditions like all-cause mortality, hypertension, diabetes, and more with nothing but a download of an app, making health monitoring affordable and accessible to everyone. Their solution, Vibro, is a smartphone app that requires no extra devices to measure blood pressure. The ultimate goal is to provide affordable blood pressure monitoring by leveraging the existing smartphone infrastructure. Even if an individual does not own a smartphone personally, access can be bootstrapped through family and community support, reducing barriers of accessing hypertension screening. Through iterative design process, the team continues to refine…
Grant Funding: 2024 Innovation Award Competition: Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies in Heart, Lung, Blood and Sleep Disorders (CAPCaT)
Billion Labs Inc is a recipient of the 2024 CAPCaT Innovation Award to further advance the design of the user interface for their VibroBP smartphone app for measuring blood pressure. The award covers $100,000 in direct costs for the 12-month long project. The CAPCaT is a partnership between UMass Chan Medical School and UMass Lowell. The center's mission is to support development and testing of promising, point-of-care technologies that can be rapidly deployed to enhance the diagnosis, monitoring, management and treatment of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders. The center has an additional interest in projects that incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches. CAPCaT is supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute via U54HL143541. Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/blood-pressure-readings-your-fingertips (Press Release)
New Hire: Full-time Software Engineer
Funding from the pilot award enabled Billion Labs Inc. to hire a full-time software engineer, Tatsuo Kumamoto. Source: Tatsuo Kumamoto (LinkedIn)
Patent: PCT filed for VibroBP
PCT filed for VibroBP: U.S. Provisional Application No. 63/385,383 - Colin Barry et al. - Mobile Device Based Oscillometric Blood Pressure Measurement [SD2023-139-1; 009062-8487.WO00]