Accuracy of drug store blood pressure monitors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Publically accessible blood pressure monitors are widely used, but little information is available on their accuracy. We compared blood pressure readings of 17 drug store monitors with those obtained using a validated home monitor (Omron BP742CAN) and both with those taken at home using the Canadian Hypertension Education Program protocol. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Duplicate readings were taken using the drug store monitor (VitaStat, n=6, and PharmaSmart, n=11) on the left arm and the Omron on the right in three participants: two normal and one untreated hypertensive patient. We used Bland-Altman methods for comparison. We explored the correlation with average home blood pressure readings. RESULTS: Home average blood pressure for our three participants was 121±6/73±5, 106±6/62±4, and 142±8/81±7 mmHg. The mean systolic blood pressure difference (drug store-Omron) was -1.8±8.2 mmHg. Diastolic pressure difference was 1.7±5.6. Individual paired systolic differences varied from -19 to 14 mmHg. For the participant who required a large cuff, drug store systolic readings tended to be higher (4.1±6.7). In our three participants, drug store monitors as a group read higher than home systolic blood pressure: 7.5 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.5-13.4], 1.2 (95% CI -4.0 to 6.4), and 1.0 (95% CI -2.5 to 4.4) mmHg. Diastolic blood pressure and heart rate differences were similar in magnitude. CONCLUSION: On average, drug store monitors recorded lower systolic blood pressures and higher diastolic blood pressures than a validated monitor, but the difference was neither statistically nor clinically significant. Single reading comparisons showed a much broader range. In three participants, drug store monitors did reflect the average home blood pressure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.037 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".