Home Healthcare Becomes a Must | OMRON’s EKG & Blood Pressure
By: Glen Gilmore
Tags: Heart Health, Wellness, Smart Home, Mobile Health, Blood Pressure

Barely a minute to simultaneously take an EKG and Blood Pressure Test on OMRON’s Complete ™.

An instructor of Emerging Technologies at Rutgers University School of Business Executive Education Programs and a “Top 100 Health Tech Influencer”, having served for several years on the board of directors of a major university hospital, I am often asked to collaborate with brands to review healthcare-related products and services. Though I have agreed to a paid collaboration with OMRON, the thoughts here are my own and may not reflect those of OMRON.

Suddenly, home healthcare becomes a must.

About three weeks ago, I started using OMRON’s Complete ™. It is the first mobile blood pressure monitor — with FDA clearance — that simultaneously takes an EKG. I wrote about it in another post called, “Complete” a Heart Health Challenge.

I reported that heart disease is “the leading cause of death in the United States, causing about 1 in 4 deaths”, according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control). In addition to a healthy lifestyle, regular EKG’s and blood pressure exams are the only way to combat what is often referred to as a “silent killer” because symptoms of a heart problem may otherwise be invisible.

As a part-time travel blogger and frequent business traveler, I noted with a bit of excitement how light and compact the device is and how I looked forward to bringing it along on my travels.

I announced that I would report on my progress and invited you to do the same. This was supposed to be a post in which I focused on how I weaved taking an EKG and blood pressure exam into a habit — sharing when I would take the exam and how I might reward myself for doing so. I’m still going to do that, but, I also need to address the elephant in the room.

Much has changed in the span of three weeks.

Just a little over three weeks ago, I was flying internationally. Today, like you, perhaps, I find myself grounded by the threat of coronavirus and under new rules that require me and everyone else in my small town, to stay within their homes unless they are headed to a grocery store or pharmacy. All “non-essential” healthcare is indefinitely postponed.

Access to Quality Healthcare Monitoring Matters

Having served for several years on the board of directors of a university hospital while the young mayor of a US city of about 90,000 people, I consider public access to quality healthcare a passion. What happens when that access is suddenly closed to nearly everyone? What happens to that person with known health risks who suddenly can’t get routine examinations to monitor serious or suspected conditions, such as high blood pressure? A silent killer.

Quality home healthcare monitoring has suddenly become a must. How do I define “quality”? A mobile medical monitoring device that has received FDA clearance should be the touchstone for quality home healthcare monitors, like OMRON’s Complete ™.

How complicated is it to give yourself an EKG and blood pressure exam at home? Not.

The video capturing my “Complete” EKG and blood pressure exams is only one minute and 15 seconds long.

So when do I “Complete” my EKG and Blood Exam? (And how do I reward myself?)

Spoiler alert: look again at the photo at the start of this post and the video here. The answer is not so hidden in both…

My habit is to take my Complete exam right before breakfast or dinner and my reward is a hot meal! So I’m a simple guy. According to the recommendations, you shouldn’t give yourself the exam right after strenuous exercise or drinking coffee. Before a meal and rewarded by a meal seems to work for me.

I hope you’ll join me in doing all that you can to adopt a healthier lifestyle. My hope is, no surprise, that it also includes making OMRON’s Complete a part of your self-care routine.

And please check back in about two weeks for my next installment on my Complete heart health challenge! “Stay home, stay safe!”

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Let’s get healthier together! Thanks.