Ring-Type Cuffless Monitor Becomes First Added to Official Hypertension Guidelines

Detecting nocturnal and morning hypertension often requires out-of-office assessment, but conventional cuff-type monitors can disrupt sleep. New national guidance in South Korea expands 24-hour monitoring to patients with prehypertension and high-risk conditions while emphasizing masked hypertension detection. A new ring-type cuffless device is now included in the country’s official hypertension guidelines after demonstrating accuracy against standard 24-hour ambulatory monitoring.

CART BP pro, a ring‑type cuffless blood pressure monitor from Sky Labs (Seongnam, South Korea), has been integrated into the 2026 Korean Society of Hypertension Guidelines for the Management of Hypertension (6th Edition). The Society designates cuffless monitors as a Class IIb recommendation for out‑of‑office blood pressure measurement. This marks the first global inclusion of a ring‑type monitor in official hypertension treatment guidelines, and positions Korea as the first healthcare system to incorporate cuffless blood pressure technology into mainstream clinical practice.

The device is worn on a finger and measures blood pressure without an arm‑compressing cuff. It analyzes photoplethysmography (PPG) signals using artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning to enable 24‑hour measurement during daily life and sleep with minimal discomfort. By reducing the inconvenience, repetitive compression pain, and sleep disturbance associated with conventional cuff‑type ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), the ring‑type format is presented as a practical tool for continuous assessment.

Research cited in the guidelines reports that ring‑type cuffless monitors met the accuracy requirements of ISO 81060‑2:2018 in comparative clinical trials against standard 24‑hour ABPM, maintaining a mean error within 5 mmHg and a standard deviation within 8 mmHg during both day and night. CART BP pro also showed favorable correlation with office blood pressure measured by the traditional auscultatory method. 

The guidelines formalize out‑of‑office protocols for prehypertension and high‑risk groups, noting domestic data that nocturnal hypertension occurs in about 18–23% of the general population and that 92.6% of those cases are masked. Morning hypertension was reported at 15.9% among patients with hypertension and identified as a major cardiovascular risk factor.

CART BP pro received medical device approval in 2023 and gained national health insurance reimbursement in June 2024 under the existing procedure for 24‑hour ABPM (code E6547). Since reimbursement, it has been prescribed more than 250,000 times and is in active use at 1,920 hospitals and clinics nationwide, including tertiary general hospitals.

“The inclusion of ‘CART BP pro’ in the KSH guidelines demonstrates that Korea is leading the global clinical standard for cuffless blood pressure technology. Leveraging this unparalleled clinical evidence and our successful domestic adoption, we will now accelerate overseas regulatory approvals to establish a new global standard in hypertension management,” said Jack ByungHwan Lee, CEO of Sky Labs.

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