2024 Apple Watch tipped to have two new health monitoring features
The 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch might see the debut of two new health monitoring features on the smartwatch: blood pressure monitoring and sleep apnea detection.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg believes the blood pressure sensor on the 2024 Apple Watch will be "pathbreaking" or innovative. For next year, the first-generation blood pressure sensor can only notify users if their blood pressure is trending upwards or downwards. In addition, Apple plans to provide a journalfor users to jot down symptoms when hypertension happens.
Gurman says Apple is working on a future version of the blood pressure sensor that can provide exact numbers and diagnose related conditions, but these features could take some time to launch.
The blood pressure monitoring feature has been rumouredfor years – as early as 2017. It was reported in October 2017 that Apple was granted a patent for "Wrist Worn Accelerometer for Pulse Transmit Time (PTT) Measurements of Blood Pressure".
The Wall Street Journal wrote in September 2021 that blood pressure monitoring was among the new health-related features being planned for the Apple Watch. The blood pressure monitoring feature will not show the systolic and diastolic readings, but a trending chart of the blood pressure.
Apple initially wanted to launch the blood pressure monitoring feature earlier, but purported accuracy issues with the sensor forced the company to push back the plan. Gurman's initial timeframe for the debut of the blood pressure monitoring feature on the Apple Watch was 2025, but he did not share in his latest report why that timeline has been moved forward to next year.
For the sleep apnea detection feature, Apple is expected to use sleep and breathing patterns to predict whether the user has the condition. Like all its health features, Apple will prompt the user to seek proper medical diagnosis.
The development of the noninvasive blood glucose tech remains a challenge for Apple despite having spent "a few years and hundreds of millions of dollars." Apple also wanted to use AI to process the data and generate a forecast of if and when the user will become diabetic.
Apple continues to develop the blood glucose technology at a cost of "high tens of millions of dollars a year," but sources told Gurman that it will still take a couple of years before it's ready.
Source: Bloomberg via MacRumours
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