![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.euronews.com\/website\/images\/logos\/logo-euronews-stacked-outlined-72x72-grey-9.svg\"){kind=logo}
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
\n Published on 24\/09\/2025 – 7:35 GMT+2
\n \u2022Updated
\n 16:03\n <\/p>\n
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Apple will soon launch a new smartwatch feature it says can help detect high blood pressure \u2013 but cardiologists are urging people to be cautious when interpreting the results.<\/p>\n
Once the update is approved by regulators, the Apple Watch will use its light sensor to analyse how a wearer\u2019s blood vessels respond to their heartbeat, alerting them if it detects consistent signs of chronic hypertension, or high blood pressure.<\/p>\n
Notably, the watch will not offer actual blood pressure readings \u2013 just alerts that wearers may have hypertension. Apple said it will recommend that wearers who receive these alerts use a cuff to track their blood pressure levels over a week, and then contact their doctor with the results.<\/p>\n
Health experts say that while the feature has some limitations, it could help raise awareness of a condition that often goes undetected.<\/p>\n
Nearly 1.3 billion adults worldwide have high blood pressure, though nearly half do not know it. Most people don\u2019t feel any symptoms, but hypertension raises the risk of heart attack, stroke, and kidney damage.<\/p>\n
Apple said it expects regulators to approve the feature \u201csoon,\u201d and that it plans to roll it out in more than 150 countries and regions, including the European Union.<\/p>\n
It will be available on its Apple Watch Series 9, and later, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and watchOS 26.<\/p>\n
The smartwatch feature could be \u201cgood for trends,\u201d but should not be relied upon for precise health data or decision-making, Dr Felix Mahfoud, chair of the cardiology department at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, told Euronews Health.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell you what it means if we measure your blood pressure [in a doctor\u2019s office], in terms of your risk of stroke\u201d and other health issues, said Mahfoud, who is also communications chair for the European Society of Cardiology.<\/p>\n
However, \u201call this is basically unknown for detection by smartwatches\u201d and \u201cno one should ever base any treatment or management decision based on a smartwatch,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In tests involving more than 2,200 people, Apple said the watch\u2019s hypertension feature had a sensitivity rate \u2013 the ability to correctly identify a disease \u2013 of about 41 per cent, and a specificity rate \u2013 the ability to correctly identify the lack of a disease \u2013 of about 92 per cent.<\/p>\n
That means the watch could miss more than half of hypertension cases, but it is not likely to issue many alerts for false positives.<\/p>\n
Still, Apple said it expects to notify more than one million people with undiagnosed hypertension in the first year.<\/p>\n
The feature also isn\u2019t intended for everyone. The company does not recommend that people rely on the watch if they are under the age of 22, pregnant, or have been diagnosed with hypertension in the past.<\/p>\n
Mahfoud said it could help make more people aware of the risks of high blood pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great if we can increase awareness of hypertension, and hopefully these tools will do that,\u201d Mahfoud said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 24\/09\/2025 – 7:35 GMT+2 \u2022Updated 16:03 ADVERTISEMENT Apple will soon launch a new smartwatch feature it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[351,1378,356,134,111,139,69,1802,145,5480],"class_list":{"0":"post-41235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gadgets","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-blood-pressure","10":"tag-gadgets","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-smartwatch","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-wearable-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}