Omron HEM-Solar

Solar Powered Blood Pressure Monitors

OMRON has developed the HEM-SOLAR Series, solar-powered digital blood pressure monitors.

"HEM-SOLAR monitors will allow health practitioners and individuals to take blood pressure readings wherever sunlight is available" explained Wayne Kerr of Medicins Sans Frontiers "It will become an essential piece of our kit and all our Land Rover response vehicles will carry both manual and automatic models when they become available."

"The development of this series further illustrates Omron's commitment to environmental stewardship."

Omron Healthcare has developed two blood pressure monitors for the series, a manual upper-arm and automatic upper-arm model. Both are charged by exposure to sunlight through the solar panel at the back of the product.

After 4 hours of direct exposure to sunlight, the manual model can take more than 100 readings while the automatic model can take 28 readings. When fully charged the automatic machine can be used over 100 times.

Wherever sunlight is available, the monitors facilitate easy readings, regardless of proximity to an electrical supply source.

Omron aims to release the products in spring 2009 and will continue R&D efforts to improve device quality with respect to temperature and humidity, and will make the devices more airtight so that they can be recharged under a wider variety of conditions.

The HEM-SOLAR blood pressure monitors are environmentally conscious and use rechargeable batteries, not regular batteries, to reduce waste and emit less Co2 by using solar energy. Given the product's lifespan of 30,000 uses, the amount of waste materials that can be reduced is 80 batteries with the manual model and 400 batteries with the automatic model.