Triage Wireless has developed a patch applied to the skin that continuously monitors a person’s blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs, and then forwards that information to their doctor’s computer via wireless links.

With the AdvancedBPM, physicians will get a more complete view of a person’s vital signs during different parts of the day, including while they sleep, and over an extended period of time.

The patch takes three vital signs: heart rate, pulse oximetry (the amount of oxygen in the blood) and blood pressure. The first two are measured through an electrical sensor. Every time the heart beats, it sends out an electrical signal. A future version will also take temperatures. To measure blood pressure, an optical sensor is tuned to detect changes in the density or volume of arteries. Changes in the volume affect blood pressure.

Data gets transmitted from the patch via a Bluetooth connection to a handheld, which then sends it across a cellular network.

The company hopes to market two versions of the patch system: one for hospitals and one for home use.

Via the futures-lab cnet.