Patent ID: 7288070

Claim:
A method for obtaining at least one blood pressure value of interest from a non-invasive blood pressure measurement using an oscillometric technique, the blood pressure measurement altering the pressure of an occluder over a measurement time period to vary the extent of occlusion of a blood vessel used for pressure measurement, said method comprising the steps of: (a) analyzing the functioning of the heart to obtain physiological data suitable for identifying, in a series of heartbeats in the measurement time period, those heartbeats having blood pressure properties of interest and heartbeats not having blood pressure properties of interest; (b) obtaining oscillometric blood pressure measurement data for the heartbeats of the series and associating same to the physiological data; (c) establishing at least one criterion for the physiological data that identifies heartbeats in the series of heartbeats having the blood pressure properties of interest; (d) applying the criterion to the physiological data to accumulate a subset of the oscillometric blood pressure measurement data for which the associated physiological data meets the criterion; and (e) deriving at least one blood pressure value of interest from the accumulated subset of the oscillometric blood pressure measurement data.