Withings BPM Core Review

With the BPM Core, Withings offers a high quality smart health connected blood pressure monitor. But should you buy a smart health device of this kind without medical advice?

Smart health connected is not just a matter of well-being or monitoring physical activity. In 2019, companies are looking to occupy a sector which, if it undergoes the right modifications, will be able to change the practice of medicine. In fact, the promises of the companies of the health tech are often the same: to allow medical surveys at health home to track or detect a pathology, without having to waste time on a doctor or an emergency service or to interfere with people whose mobility would be reduced.

In the best of all worlds, smart health connected health unblocks emergencies, makes practitioners’ phones less audible, and allows objective, precise and detailed monitoring of patients at a distance. If done incorrectly, however, it can lead to the opposite situation: panicked clients, false statements misinterpreted and measures that do not meet the expectations of doctors. In these two opposing worlds, where is the BPM Core, last smart health smart health connected object sold by Withings and proposing at the same time a tensiometer, an electrocardiograph and an electronic stethoscope? Verdict after ten days of testing.

The perfect execution

From the outset, we can recognize that Withings did things right. The BPM Core, designed with cardiologists and certified medical device, is an object that does not leave much room for error of use – this is the key to a good statement and one of the frequent criticisms addressed to the car -diagnostic. Like the sphygmomanometers that are used at the doctor’s, it wraps around the left arm in a single direction (metal tip down). The design serves a function here: if you put the tip up, you can neither press the button to start the measurement, nor comfortably carry out the ECG.

In addition, the application is a model of its kind when it comes to take a user in hand. The first use is accompanied by several screens that trigger the BPM Core functions by explaining them, one after the other. It is during this initial configuration that the user will create his account and profile, providing medical data (weight, height, age …). After this configuration, you can use the BPM Core without a smartphone and only view your statements whenever you want. The full reading takes about 2 minutes 30 seconds and the battery is surprisingly good: in 10 days with several tests per day, the BPM has still not asked us to recharge it.

On your smartphone, you can view the results and Withings brings very clear information on the methodology, measurements and their interpretation. The screens are very educational and allow to understand without ambiguity what is happening in our body. The tracking is not just in the form of data: the ECG, for example, provides a video of the plot, which allows a doctor to see exactly what happened during the survey. Sharing options can finally send an email to a health professional containing a Review report, but also spreadsheets in .csv and Excel format.

Only point behind these measures: the electronic stethoscope. The object, supposed to detect the valvulopathies, never managed to make a sure diagnosis, even after the number of minimum readings reached. Good point: he did not claim to have been able to do so and simply indicated that the information he had was inconclusive. Honest, for a machine.

All this being said, and given the medical warranties by Withings, we can only advise too much that a person who needs a follow-up to move towards this complete and effective solution, that it could even propose to his doctor. in addition to medical visits.

The bad statement

However, we clearly ask the question of the need for such a device for a person who has no problem of known tension or heart problem – and if she has doubts, better make an appointment medical before investing 249 € in a smart health smart health connected object that will come at best in addition. This question arises because the Core BPM has been wrong at least once. Saturday, August 3, the app has released its most beautiful red for us report an anomaly.

Right away, it’s panic: I’m fine and suddenly, I’m not going anymore. The ECG has found signs of atrial fibrillation and invites me to contact my doctor. This side panicking is precisely what smart health connected medicine should avoid. But we still asked the advice of a doctor, Dr. Jean-Patrick Maillard, communicating the statement: ” The only obvious anomaly is a ventricular extrasystole. It’s commonplace and it does not worry. This is what everyday language describes when he says “I missed a heartbeat “. Or, if there is something, it is obviously not something serious.

But could the BPM Core have misinterpreted something else? ” Then, we see a part where the P wave is missing. A fibrillation is a ripple of the baseline and an irregularity of the rhythm, not just the absence of the wave. It may be that the algorithm has a little too smooth, and that the wave was small … it was erased. We see on the track that the wave is not very wide. It is a technical anomaly, not physiological. And finally you have a passage where the baseline seems to undulate, but the appearance is clearly that of an artifact (we see the normal P wave just after, it has a different aspect of this ripple, and normal). There is something that disturbs the recording; typically it can be a movement. Bingo, doctor: I moved my leg twice quickly to avoid my rabbit during this survey, a detail that I had not thought fit to notice. The following numerous surveys gave no indication of this fibrillation.

This is all the concern of this health tech a bit too sure of it. The app never suggested that the survey could be bad and it would be good to do it again. She immediately invited me to waste time on a doctor, who already has little. If we multiply this by the potential number of users of these objects, already saturated standards may explode. Not to mention the fact that we are on a high-end medical object – we dare not even imagine what results can give an entry-level blood pressure monitor sold in the supermarket.

Therefore, our opinion is mixed: if such a device facilitates your daily life, you save unnecessary medical visits and is a help for your doctor, then the BPM Core will be your ideal companion. On the other hand, if you are in good health or have no problem related to the BPM Core skills, you do not really have a reason to buy one, regardless of the Withings injunctions that boast a better screening on his site. If you have any doubt, nothing will be worth a first consultation, at least to make a point … and maybe buy a BPM Core to follow the evolution of a pathology.

Conclusion Withings BPM Core

In the sector of smart health tech, we can not do better product than the Withings BPM Core. But, like all products of this type, it raises the question of its usefulness for a passive follow-up and a paranoid strand of a person a priori healthy.