Congratulations to the research team of Philip Polgreen, Ted Herman, Manish Suneja, and Enrique Leira on receiving the University of Iowa Pilot Grant Program for Translational Stroke Studies award.

The team is focusing their research on blood pressure and has prototyped a new platform specifically designed to take the place of a smartphone. This platform will intercept Bluetooth communications intended for a smartphone application and forward the readings to the research team automatically.

It is known that blood pressure measurements in a clinical setting are often different than home measurements, which have the highest correlation with cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease. The current FDA-validated blood pressure monitors can communicate with smartphones utilizing Bluetooth and specific smartphone apps, but the disadvantages make it difficult for some subjects to utilize the technology and the research team to tap into the recorded data.

This platform eliminates the need for subjects to send the data to the research team and automates the entire process. The team also plans to send data from these units to a centralized server that can store data in a protected format.

This research team is a collaboration between the Carver College of Medicine Department of Internal Medicine, the Department of Computer Science, and The University of Iowa’s Health Venture Signal Center for Health Innovation.

The Carver College of Medicine is sponsoring this pilot grant initiative and partnering with the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science to encourage innovation in cerebrovascular translational science across campus.

Team Members

PI: Philip Polgreen - Internal Medicine

Collaborators: Ted Herman - Computer Science

                        Manish Suneja - Internal Medicine

                        Enrique Leira - Neurology