Apple Watch Introduces Hypertension Alerts: Here’s How the Feature Works

If you use your Apple Watch to monitor your health, there's good news. Apple has launched a hypertension notification feature on its smartwatch for Indian users. Concerns about heart attacks and high blood pressure are growing in India. Fifty percent of Indian men experience a heart attack before the age of 50, and one in four cases occurs before the age of 40. This disease, once mostly seen in older people, is now affecting younger people as well.

Meanwhile, Apple has launched a remarkable feature to help its users manage this risk. This feature doesn't attempt to measure high blood pressure, but rather identifies patterns in your blood vessel behavior over weeks and sends alerts when the risk increases. This feature will be available on Apple Watch Series 9 and later models and Apple Watch Ultra 2.

How does the hypertension notification feature work?

Simply put, the Apple Watch captures 60 seconds of data every two hours to achieve this. Samples are taken only when you're sitting still. A three-stage machine learning model processes these data points. The first model is trained on data from over 100,000 participants and identifies PPG patterns.

The second model then scores those patterns based on high BP risk. The third model then makes a final decision based on a 30-day average. While individual PPG samples may not reveal anything, a 30-day average clearly indicates whether the risk is increasing.

How will the Watch work?

• This new feature on the Apple Watch doesn't directly measure high blood pressure. Instead, it monitors your blood vessel patterns.
• This feature uses the photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor to capture data from your wrist over 30 days.
• The watch takes 60-second PPG samples approximately every two hours, but only when you're sitting still.
• This data is fed into a three-step machine learning (ML) model

The ML model reviews these samples to determine if there's persistent stress on your blood vessels, which could be a sign of chronic hypertension. According to Apple, the feature currently detects hypertension with 41% accuracy, but its accuracy is 92%. This means that when it issues an alert, it has a high probability of being accurate. It's estimated that the feature alerted more than 1 million people worldwide about undiagnosed hypertension in its first year of launch.

Indian Diversity Also Performs Well

PPG technology was previously considered less effective on darker skin tones. However, Apple claims its research included people of different races, ethnicities, and skin tones. The company clarified that no significant difference in accuracy was found based on skin color.

What to do if you receive an alert?

The Apple Watch notification doesn't tell you that you have hypertension. It simply warns you and recommends checking your blood pressure twice a day for seven days using a blood pressure meter and consulting a doctor immediately.

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