Many people live with hypertension without realising it, and the condition affects an estimated 1.4 billion individuals worldwide. Close to 40% of them do not know they have it. To help address this gap, Apple introduced a hypertension notification feature for its Watch line a few months ago. The feature is supported on Watch Series 9 and newer models and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and newer models. After receiving regulatory approval, it is now becoming available to users in India.
Apple says the hypertension notification tool will alert a user if there are signs of chronic high blood pressure. This is a onetime alert based on algorithms that study data collected by the optical heart sensor. The Watch analyses how blood vessels respond to heartbeats over a period of 30 days and sends a notification if it detects consistent signs of hypertension. A clinician who works as a cardiologist at Apple explains that hypertension often goes unnoticed because it does not show symptoms early. “So, having this feature at the scale that Apple operates at available to our users is really huge,” he says.
According to the cardiologist, the feature was built with care to reduce false positives. He says, “We develop our feature with a lot of rigour in both the development phase and the clinical validation phase and we developed (Hypertension Notification) with over 100,000 participants in development and then clinically validated it with over 2000 participants.” Apple expects the feature to notify more than 1 million users in its first year. This may be particularly helpful in India where reports indicate that 1 in every 3 adults is likely to have hypertension, while diagnosis in early stages remains poor.
As the rollout begins, users should know what the feature can and cannot do. It offers a onetime alert and does not measure blood pressure on demand the way cuff-based machines do. Users must enable it through the Health app and provide details such as age, and only those aged 22 or older can use it. The feature is not meant for individuals who already have hypertension and take medication. Once the Watch detects possible hypertension, it will guide users with next steps including checking their blood pressure at home with a regular machine.
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