– Jill Kato/UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation
Forget the cuff. Vena Vitals’ sticker-like sensor aims to deliver ICU-level data without ever breaking the skin.
Feb. 19, 2026 – Blood pressure is one of the most important measurements in healthcare. Yet how we track it hasn’t changed much in more than a century.
The standard cuff with the squeeze, wait, release, gives a brief snapshot of a vital sign that has the potential to fluctuate with each passing beat. At the other extreme is the arterial line, a catheter inserted directly into an artery, delivering a continuous stream of data but with the downsides of cost, risk and invasive discomfort.
This binary choice has frustrated clinicians for decades. But a fast-rising startup out of UC Irvine may have uncovered a third way: a soft, skin-like sensor that adheres like a Band-Aid and captures blood pressure continuously, beat by beat. It works without punctures, cuffs, or bulky machines.
Founded in 2019, Vena Vitals is betting that its flexible “blood pressure sticker” can close one of the most persistent gaps in patient monitoring. The unobtrusive small device could replace hardware found in all intensive care units. The tech has already been tested on more than 600 patients in operating rooms across the country and is now moving toward FDA clearance for hospital use.
“This is a massive unmet need in healthcare,” Vena Vitals CEO Ray Liu says. “Our blood pressures are constantly changing, but we only get snapshots in time using uncomfortable cuff compressions, or we need risky invasive procedures to track real-time changes”
A New Pulse on Patient Monitoring
The journey to rethink how we track blood pressure began at UC Irvine, where Michelle Khine, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, first developed the underlying technology. It emerged from her lab’s research into soft, stretchable electronics. The material can stretch like skin while capturing highly sensitive data.
Liu first met Khine more than two decades ago as lab mates in grad school at UC Berkeley. There, they worked on numerous biomedical sensing applications, before their paths split, with Liu heading into industry and Khine pursuing academia. When the idea of reuniting on this venture appeared, neither could pass on the opportunity to tackle such an important unmet need.
Khine contributed the core material science innovation. Liu brought his experience from both large medtech companies and startup digital health exits. And together with Josh Kim, who developed the technology for his PhD and was the lead author on the seminal papers, the three completed the founding team.
Vena Vital’s device works by sensing the tiny changes in pressure on the skin caused by blood pulsing through the arteries. As each beat compresses the sensor, it produces a signal. If blood pressure rises, the signal intensifies. If it falls, the signal dampens. Proprietary algorithms interpret this data in real time.
Vena Vitals began focusing on surgical settings, where continuous blood pressure is essential. In clinical trials, their device was placed on the foot (a location that is out of the surgical field but still over a pulse location) and transmitted data via Bluetooth to a tablet. The results were striking. Side-by-side with arterial lines, the gold standard in the industry, the Vena Vitals device matched rapid blood pressure changes almost perfectly.
Anesthesiologists took notice and saw the potential. “They told us this could really change how they manage patients,” says Liu. “Especially since arterial lines are invasive, introduce patient risk, and have unpredictable procedure times. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes to place one—sometimes it takes 40. You don’t know how long until you try.”
The stakes in the operating room are high. Surgeons, nurses, and techs may all be waiting on that line before they can begin. If a noninvasive wearable can offer the same information with none of the drama, it’s not just a win for the patient, it’s a win for the entire surgical team.
From the OR to Your Bedroom
While Vena Vitals’ initial focus is inside the hospital, its ambitions extend beyond the operating room to the bedroom, where undiagnosed blood pressure-related conditions can go unnoticed.
Sleep apnea affects more than a billion people worldwide, yet most people don’t know they have it. The condition causes the body to stop breathing temporarily during sleep, triggering spikes in blood pressure as the body scrambles to recover lost oxygen. Over time, these repeated surges can put enormous strain on the heart, brain, and kidneys.
Vena Vitals’ device can detect those surges in exquisite detail. “We’re the first and only technology that can quantify the magnitude of blood pressure spikes immediately after apneic events,” says Liu. “That gives doctors a whole new way to assess how severe the condition really is.”
This could have major implications for treatment. Currently, the standard for diagnosing sleep apnea is the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), which counts how many times you stop breathing per hour. But the AHI doesn’t provide the full view of the physiological impact of those events.
For example, a patient might stop breathing 12 times an hour—a case that would normally be labeled mild sleep apnea—but still experience intense blood pressure surges during each event. That kind of spike puts significant strain on the cardiovascular system. Another patient might stop breathing 70 times an hour, which would be diagnosed as severe, but only show mild pressure changes. In other words, what matters isn’t just how often the airway closes, it’s also how intensely the body responds. It’s hypothesized that repeated surges in blood pressure, especially at night, can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke and long-term damage. By including the intensity of these surges, rather than just counting how many times someone stops breathing, clinicians get a more accurate picture of cardiovascular risk.
“This gives us a much more nuanced view,” says Liu. “And in some cases, it can change how doctors decide to treat the patient.”
The long-term vision is for Vena Vitals’ sensors to be part of a comprehensive sleep monitoring system. It could also be integrated into consumer products.
“Consumers want more than sleep quality scores,” says Liu. “They want meaningful health data. And for people with chronic conditions, this kind of information could be game-changing.”
Geared for Impact
Vena Vitals is part of a wave of research-based ventures to take shape within UC Irvine’s innovation community. The company’s ties to the University run deep. It has space at the Cove at UCI and at University Lab Partners (ULP), an independent, nonprofit wet lab incubator located at UC Irvine Research Park. And of the company’s 14 employees, nine are UC Irvine alumni, including five Ph.D.s.
“The university has been foundational for us,” says Liu. “Not just for the technology, but for talent, infrastructure, clinical partnerships, everything.” That support included a Proof of Product (PoP) grant from Beall Applied Innovation, which helped the team conducted early market research and customer discovery, including interviews with about 30 anesthesiologists. The insights shaped both the product’s initial features and the clinical markets the company would pursue first. While the team had always envisioned consumer applications, the interviews reinforced the need to first stay clinically grounded.
“There’s a lot of noise in the wearable space,” says Liu. “But we’ve always been about clinical impact. We didn’t want this to be another gadget you wear. We wanted it to be something that delivers true medical outcomes.”
To get there, the company has secured a mix of venture funding and federal grants, with additional support from accelerators including Y Combinator, MedTech Innovator, and EvoNexus. FDA clearance is anticipated soon this year, which would open the door for the device’s use in hospitals.
Beyond that, the company is already planning for expansion—first into home sleep monitoring, then potentially into chronic disease management and remote patient care.
There’s no shortage of ambition, but Liu remains pragmatic. “We know we’re early,” he says. “But we also know what this could become.”
In a healthcare system built around snapshots, Vena Vitals is offering something rare: continuous insight without added discomfort. It’s a reminder that innovation doesn’t always mean doing more, sometimes it means finding a more elegant solution.
Learn more: https://www.venavitals.com
Click here to read full article on the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering website.
