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Apple Watch Blood Pressure Feature Hits More Snags in Apple's Testing

Apple's plan to bring blood-pressure tracking to the Apple Watch is still hitting snags, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

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Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman says that the company "continues to run into problems" while testing the feature. No other information was provided on the issues Apple is having.

Gurman has been reporting on Apple's plan to bring blood pressure monitoring since January 2022. In a November 2023 report, he said that the initial version wouldn't show a user their exact systolic and diastolic measurements, but Apple was working on a follow-up version for later that could do so.

At the time, Gurman said the feature was on the cards for the Apple Watch Series 10, but that didn't happen.

More recently, Gurman has said the feature would track whether a user's blood pressure is trending upwards and send an alert if hypertension is detected. After receiving an alert, the Apple Watch user could provide the information to a medical professional for additional testing.

Hypertension is known as a silent killer because it can go undetected and undiagnosed, leading to heart damage and death. High blood pressure often has few symptoms until it is notably advanced, and early detection via the Apple Watch has the potential to save lives.

As recently as last December, Gurman claimed that Apple was "ramping up" work on blood-pressure tracking and that the feature could arrive as soon as 2025. But going on his latest comments, even that now sounds unlikely.

Related Forum: Apple Watch

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Top Rated Comments

15 months ago

Nobody should rely on a watch for BP monitoring. You can buy a proper home monitoring kit very cheaply.
Yes of course you can, but you don't wear them everyday do you? Point of the watch is to give you a warning and a history of readings.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
15 months ago
Apple has definitely hit a plateau with the Apple Watch. They do need new features and blood pressure would be amazing. Let's see.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
15 months ago
Maybe next year or next next year
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
15 months ago

Nobody should rely on a watch for BP monitoring. You can buy a proper home monitoring kit very cheaply.
If it's accurate, why not? 🤷‍♂️
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
15 months ago
The day the Apple Watch can properly detect your blood pressure and glucose readings is the day it will be an invaluable device for millions for their health.

EDIT: Just wanted to add here, I had the misfortune of developing a small heart condition in 2019, it meant a trip in an ambulance. My heart rate shot up rapidly and didn’t drop. Now I had an Apple Watch series 1 at the time and it is what I used to check my heart rate, and I continued to use it to check my pulse and it perfectly matched the readers the Ambulance crew had and the reader in the hospital. It was EXACTLY the same. Now once my condition was diagnosed I knew that and was comfortable in the knowledge that the Apple Watch was a perfectly reliable tool to check my heart rate if I had any attacks, and then I got one with the ECG monitor as that was also extremely useful for doctors for the same reason.

So you can bet I’ll grab a new one when it gets BP monitoring built in.

The only thing I wish for is that they allow the Apple Watch to work with the iPad instead of locking it down to just the iPhone.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
15 months ago

Nobody should rely on a watch for BP monitoring. You can buy a proper home monitoring kit very cheaply.
Yes, but as someone who has hypertension I’d really appreciate the continuous monitoring a watch can provide.

To take accurate measurements with an arm cuff machine it requires about 15 minutes (10 minutes of sitting still, and 5 minutes to do 2 measurements 2 minutes apart) twice a day which is a fairly involved process to do regularly.

The hospital recently gave me continuous blood pressure monitor (which funnily enough is a watch like device) and it has been fantastic.

I’d absolutely love this if it was accurate enough.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)