The groundbreaking health feature will roll out as part of the watchOS 26 update<\/p>\n
Apple has received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its new hypertension notification feature for the Apple Watch<\/a>. <\/p>\n The news is a significant validation for the company\u2019s health ambitions and arrives just in time, as the feature is set to roll out to users with the launch of watchOS 26<\/a> (from today, 15 September).<\/p>\n The groundbreaking feature was a headline announcement at Apple\u2019s hardware event last week, presented as one of the key additions of the all-new Series 11<\/a> and Ultra 3<\/a> (which launch on 19 September). It will also roll out to existing users of the Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2.<\/p>\n The feature works passively in the background over 30-day periods, using the watch\u2019s optical heart sensor to analyze blood vessel response to heartbeats. <\/p>\n If it detects consistent patterns that may be indicative of chronic high blood pressure, it will send a notification to the user, prompting them to consult with a doctor.<\/p>\n The approvals keep coming<\/p>\n The new clearance is another major regulatory milestone for the Apple Watch, placing the hypertension feature alongside a growing list of validated health tools on the device. <\/p>\n \n Advertisement <\/p>\n It joins the ECG app<\/a>, which has been cleared to detect signs of atrial fibrillation (AFib) since 2018, and the more recently introduced features for detecting signs of sleep apnea<\/a>. The hearing aid feature on AirPods Pro 2<\/a>, too, received expanded clearance in more regions earlier this year.<\/p>\n This latest approval from the FDA marks another step in the Apple Watch\u2019s development as a serious and credible personal health monitoring device. <\/p>\n We\u2019ll provide a full explainer on the new feature once we\u2019ve had a chance to live with it and understand its nuances. Stay tuned for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The groundbreaking health feature will roll out as part of the watchOS 26 update Apple has received clearance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[203,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-36475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gadgets","8":"tag-gadgets","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}