iWatch, anyone? Apple granted U.S. patent for embedded heart rate monitor

“The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 23 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.

“In this particular report we cover five design patents that were granted to Apple today in addtion to focusing on one key invention relating to an embedded heart rate monitor,” Purcher reports. “The invention states that beyond it being embedded into a future iPhone, the heart rate monitor could be embedded into an accessory.”

“Earlier this year Apple’s CEO and other team members were spotted wearing Nike’s FuelBand,” Purcher reports. “This led to speculation that Apple’s newly published wristband computer invention (that is popularly thought of as a future wearable computer or iWatch) would be an ideal device for embedding a health monitoring system. That makes this granted patent a possible key component of any such future device.”

Read more in the full article here.

24 Comments

        1. Kind of. You’ll be an unwitting tool, carrying a remote operated video-camera/microphone/tracker/all-around-surveillance-vacuum-device around your wrist. You’ll do your part getting the goods on ourself and your associates, filling up city-sized NSA data storage centers being built in the midwest, with information for big money to use against you if you don’t comply. Thats the end game for the NSA, to attack US citizens, not foreign threats. Take chevron for example, their actions today is the future, thanks to future iWatch wearing pawns. http://www.progressive.org/chevron-gets-access-private-data-for-revenge-suit

        2. Hey, watching, you’re a bit behind the times, my friend; Neil Stephenson described a wired-up spook stringer in Snow Crash, which he published in 1992. The reality is only now catching up with the fiction.

    1. how about apple’s newest chips, the size of proteins that circulate through the body, surveying, making health checks, some attaching permanently to endocrine glands and even more to neurons and clusters of brain cells. when you want to relive an event, you lock the door, get comfy, strap in and send an order through the iWatch. maybe, even rewrite a few memories that went awry the first time around. but then, it probably wouldn’t be right to remember wrong if there were friends that were remembering more right than you. you’d need a backup to get yourself straight up, again. so confusing. probably not a good idea.

      1. “If we [see] someone wearing a piece of tape across their Google glasses does that mean they’ve been pawned?”

        No, it just means they probably finished having sex—their partner makes them wear the tape—and forgot about the tape.

  1. So does Apple have the experience to build robust devices for human implant and would they be celebrated like each new iteration of iPad?

    They build the software routines for their hardware specs and release them into the “body” of Apple’s ecosystem and each time, the body seems to welcome the addition with great joy.

    Apple is full of scientists and doctors with a passion for making their own lives better and Apple provides each one of them with a view of the future. If their passion is in line with Apple’s vision, bells ring.

    So, could Apple earn an endorsement of the FDA?

    I think they can and will.

    iHealth pods being surgically inserted into the body’s cavities to promote health and quality of life sure sounds like a keystone to Apple’s raison d’être; Joy.

    I for one, have no objections to exploring the possibilities of “internal” computerized bodily functions like dialysis or the disbursal of chemical but only time will tell.

    The question is, would this serve Apple’s interests, getting into medical devices?

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