KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 28 — Do you have either an Apple Watch Series 9 or later/Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later?
There’s a new health feature going “live” today in Malaysia — hypertension detection.
I was mildly confused when it was first announced but let me help you be a lot less confused than I was.
What it is
The Apple Watch is like a digital notebook on your wrist (when it’s not telling you the time) that collects data on everything from your resting heart rate to your walking steadiness.
Of course you are told about it and the data isn’t sold off to third-parties and is encrypted in the Cloud and apps that use the Apple Health framework need you to manually sign-off on what data they can pull.
How the hypertension feature works is that if you don’t already know you have hypertension, your Apple Watch will suggest you check.
This is after collecting data from the optical heart sensor that, according to the release analyses “how a user’s blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart.”
The Apple Watch algorithm reviews the data in the background over 30-day periods and notifies users should they show signs of hypertension.
According to the documentation, users of the feature must be “22 years or older, not pregnant, and have not been diagnosed with hypertension.”
What it isn’t
The new feature isn’t meant to replace current means of detecting hypertension.
It’s more like someone who knows you well noticing that you seem to be more tired or have frequent headaches and saying, hey, you might want that checked out.
So you will still need to use a third-party device if you actually want to keep your blood pressure logged and the Apple Health app has a Blood Pressure log you can use to keep track of your readings, as well as have them in an accessible format to show your doctor.
I’ve personally had to show my blood pressure readings to two different doctors who were sceptical about my having BP issues until I showed them my readings on the phone.
It took one doctor swapping my blood pressure cuff to another arm to see proof that my blood pressure was troublingly high so I’m grateful for modern health features. Otherwise I’d have to demonstrate my BP problems the old fashioned way: yelling in the doctor’s office.
You only get it on the newer Apple Watches (Series 9 and newer) and sadly not the first Apple Watch Ultra, which is still a darn good watch.
I already know I have hypertension so this feature won’t work for me, but hypertension can creep up on people unawares.
The feature is also not infallible; just because you didn’t get the notification, it doesn’t mean you don’t have hypertension.
For me, high blood pressure readings was one symptom that there was something very wrong (that was cancer but that’s a whole other story) so getting the nudge that you might need to check your blood pressure could be literally lifesaving.
Being put on BP meds before I started my cancer treatment helped protect my heart during immunotherapy so I’m grateful for them and for health devices, even if sometimes I would like the Apple Watch to stop telling me to stand when I’m trying to have a nice nap.
The hypertension detection feature goes “live” in Malaysia today and you can, if you’re curious, read a clinical validation paper on it here.
