A pair of newly-revealed patent applications show that Apple wants to make it possible for the Apple Watch to continually monitor blood pressure. Apple’s patent application, “Electrical Coupling of Pulse Transit Time (PTT) Measurement System to Heart for Blood Pressure Measurement,” asserts that it can be done without interruption to the user.
Perhaps the very first health feature of the Apple Watch was its ability to sense heart rate. Five years and six versions on, it’s still a key feature — and Apple continues to research how to add blood pressure measurements to it.
[Apple’s] “Blood Pressure Monitoring Using a Multi-Function Wrist-Worn Device” patent application, propose using the Watch as just one part of the process. In each of these new applications, the Watch will measure blood pressure by timing how long it takes a pulse to reach it from the user’s heart.
This does mean the user wearing electrodes or some other kind of sensor as well as the Apple Watch. So it’s not going to be adopted by everyone, it will be used when medical advice recommends continuous study.
MacDailyNews Take: If Apple Watch, in conjunction with a simple additional sensor, could accomplish continuous blood pressure monitoring, this would obviously be a very useful information for doctors and patients who require accurate blood pressure data that are more meaningful than a single check in a doctor’s office.