After years of unremitting development, Viatom has launched more than 70 products and obtained more than 120 patents in the fields of respiratory and sleep health, cardiovascular health, sports health, diagnostic imaging and many others.
We are always striving to provide users with lightweight, high-quality health tracking and screening devices.
Before professional medical equipment was developed, blood pressure and blood oxygen measurements all required arterial incisions.
Blood pressure is the pressure of blood pushing against the walls of the arteries. In 1819, the doctor needed to insert one side of the short tube of the U-shaped mercury manometer into the patient’s artery to measure the blood pressure of the patient’s brachial artery. Although it is worth remembering the first time that blood pressure was measured, it is clear that the direct insertion of a tube into an artery to measure blood pressure can not be widely used.
After 80 years of development, in 1896, scientists combined a rubber ball, a rubber pouch armband, and a glass tube filled with mercury to form the prototype of the blood pressure monitor that people use today. When measuring, a rubber cuff is wrapped around a person’s upper arm, and the blood flow is blocked or restored by inflating and deflating the rubber ball, and blood pressure readings are obtained according to the pulsation and height of mercury in the glass tube. But the device can only measure arterial systolic blood pressure, and the data is not very accurate.
In 1905, Nikolai Kolotkov used a stethoscope to listen for Korotkoff sounds to determine systolic and diastolic blood pressure. So far, the most classic modern method of measuring blood pressure with mercury sphygmomanometer, known as the “gold standard”, was born. The mercury sphygmomanometer was widely recognized by doctors and nurses for a long time after its birth and was once the only standard for clinical hypertension diagnosis. However, the mercury sphygmomanometer has very high requirements for the user, which needs to hear the Korotkoff sound accurately, so the accuracy of the data is easily affected by the medical environment and the subjective factors of the doctor.
In addition, the mercury in the mercury sphygmomanometer can easily bring mercury pollution, which poses a huge threat to the human body and the environment. Mercury has strong volatility and adsorption, which can be toxic to the human body through the respiratory tract, skin contact, digestive tract, etc. An environment with a concentration of 1.2~8.5 mg/m3 will cause human mercury poisoning. Therefore, since 2000, some states in the United States have banned the use of mercury sphygmomanometers and mercury thermometers. At present, most countries in the world have banned the production and sale of mercury sphygmomanometers.
The measurement of blood oxygen has also transitioned from blood draw to non-invasive. In 1977, the world’s first pulsatile oximeter, OXIMET MET-1471 (desktop), was successfully commercialized. This oximeter used a halogen lamp as the light source of the pulse wave. After the finger probe received the light from the light-emitting diode, a silicon photodiode in the chassis analyses the transmitted light.
Benchtop oximeters have huge probes and heavy cables that limit the movement of medical staff and patients. And the high cost of the equipment and the bulky body determine that doctors can only measure the patient’s blood oxygen level briefly when the operation is necessary. The real-time, continuous and long-term blood oxygen monitoring required for clinical surgery cannot be met. Due to the limitation of equipment volume and power consumption, the concept of blood oxygen monitoring still remains in the hospital, and the necessity of blood oxygen monitoring is still unclear to individuals and families.
