Apple Targets Watch Blood-Pressure Tool for 2024 After Snags (bloomberg.com) 33
Apple's plan to add a highly anticipated blood-pressure monitor to its smartwatch has hit some snags and the technology isn't expected to be ready until 2024 at the earliest, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The company has teams working on an updated sensor and software for the Apple Watch that would determine if a user has high blood pressure, but accuracy has been a challenge during testing, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The feature has been planned for at least four years, but it's probably two years away from hitting the market and may slip until 2025, they said. Apple's shares were up about 1% at 9:41 a.m. in New York. Blood-pressure features may become a key selling point for smartwatches in coming years, but the technology hasn't been easy to master. Though Apple rivals such as Samsung have launched watches with the capability, they require monthly calibration with a traditional monitor. Last year, Alphabet-owned Fitbit launched a public study to test wrist-based blood-pressure measurement.
Pulse transit time? (Score:2)
If it's pulse transit time (what else on a watch?) then that's going to be hard.
You can measure it with ECG (you touch the watch with your other hand IIRC) for the heartbeat, the color pulse for the transit time. It's notoriously tricky though. It's great for continuous measurement without a cuff, but it's hard to calibrate because not only does it vary from person to person, it drifts too, so it needs periodic re calibration.
Re:Pulse transit time? (Score:4, Informative)
Hard to tell by reading prior patent applications. Looks like it presses a plate against the skin that measures pressure, combined with ultrasound to measure the depth of the target artery and additional sensors measure the watch's movement to compensate for changes in pressure due to movement.
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Has to be perfect (Score:2)
This will be a keystone feature of the Apple Watch, so it has to be perfect. No calibration. It just has to work. And it has to be optical, not a an inflatable band. If they can do that they will OWN the smart watch market for most...
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My thing is, do you really need real-time blood pressure monitoring? And if so, is a smart watch the right device for that? Seems periodic testing with a more specialized device would be better.
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Well as for the first point, real time blood pressure monitoring sounds awesome to me. You can see exactly how everything you do and experience effects your blood pressure. Want to see how that new work out routine is effecting your blood pressure? How about how much of your blood pressure problem is work stress? There's tons of useful data to be hand if this thing is reliable.
I don't know anything about your other questions but if this thing is actually accurate it seems like it would be extremely useful f
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Yeah, I can see your points. More data is never a bad thing if it is taken in context and used correctly.
Re: Has to be perfect (Score:3)
For her the watch could be used to fine-tune her medication.
Once applied for a job at a company that developed this kind of equipment for professional sports. They used this to tweak the training program. A.o. they used the data to
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For her the watch could be used to fine-tune her medication.
Absolutely not, this is never going to be accurate enough to be used that way. This has nothing to do with that. Don't engage in magical thinking.
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2024? (Score:4, Funny)
Great, it'll be ready for us all to watch our blood pressures spike.
Only useful as a possible warning (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as someone with BP issues - this is only really a useful feature to tell you you may have a problem, but not for any kind of sustained monitoring. You'll still need a real cuff, and it's going to be prone to lots of false positives I fear. It's not a substitute for doing proper checks to make sure you are doing good. Unfortunately, since people are generally lazy, they may rely on this instead of doing it properly. It's one of those cases to me where I'd almost rather it not be a thing if it's not providing a real measurement.
Still useful (Score:2)
Yes people are lazy (and forgetful), which is actually an argument in favor of something like this. Even a low quality measurement dozens (or hundreds) of times a day is probably better than a high quality measurement once a day, when/if you remember. I generally only remember when I'm not feelin
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How do you know how effective it is? Seems to me if they wanted to release what you're talking about they could have by now.
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Everyone on slashdot is an expert in everything. Too bad they mostly complain instead of solving problems.
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That's what I'm expecting here but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. At least most of the time.
Re: Only useful as a possible warning (Score:2)
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Fine I’ll offer a solution. Shut the site down since it probably has 100 regular posters left and about 900 sock puppet accounts.
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Everyone on slashdot is an expert in everything. Too bad they mostly complain instead of solving problems.
Dude. You just literally did what you are complaining about!
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How do you know how effective it is? Seems to me if they wanted to release what you're talking about they could have by now.
Real medical device companies have been trying to invent this for 50 years. What makes you think it is even half as accurate as they say, when they're pushing back the vapor-date again and again? What makes you think it is already useful for anything? Do you figure they're just taking extra time to sand down the icons?
How do you know how effective it is?
How do you?
But that said, we can infer how accurate it isn't because 1) medical device companies haven't been able to invest something highly accurate, and they've been trying for decades and
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Real medical device companies have been trying to invent this for 50 years. What makes you think it is even half as accurate as they say, when they're pushing back the vapor-date again and again? What makes you think it is already useful for anything? Do you figure they're just taking extra time to sand down the icons?
And I can just as easily ask you why would Apple spend over 5 years of development on a cheap gimmick? This is obviously meant to be a major feature or they would have sidelined it after year 2.
Now I'm not saying that it is guaranteed to do everything they claim but it's 100% pure pessimism to claim that all it will do is something that is more or less useless.
How do you?
And how do you? We can do this all day.
1) medical device companies haven't been able to invest something highly accurate, and they've been trying for decades
Wow, and we've never seen a disruptive tech company challenge the established players and come out on top? *co
Mainly useless (Score:2)
In the unlikely event that they can make this work even remotely well, it is only useful to find out if you suffer from exercise-related blood pressure spiking, which is going to be rare among users.
The main market will be the fat people who are now the main market for everything, and think that a blood pressure watch will lower their blood pressure.
This (Score:2)
This is the very first function I've heard for a smart watch that actually sounds useful to me personally.
Good thing I don't own one (Score:2)
My blood prressure is always high at work dealing with idiots and incompetence at all levels.
The watch would auto-notify emergency services every 15 minutes.
Ecg and eeg (Score:2)
We need someone to invent a long term wearable real-time EEG (brain) and also an ECG (heart). I mean in the style of the Dexcom G7 continuous blood glucose monitor which is small and wearable like a bandaid for a week. We need a conveniently wearable ECG because by the time you feel a heart attack you already lost many minutes during which an intervention might have saved you. A lot of heart attacks are mild chest pain which some people ignore. An EKG that takes a reading every few minutes or constantly can
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Well I was thinking some kind of large bandaid in the shape of half-circle or something like that on in the chest, but yeah an undershirt with parts that stick to the skin would work. By the way, a study with Kardia has shown that even with 2 wires they were able to get results almost equivalent to a 12 lead ECG. References: https://www.alivecor.com/press... [alivecor.com] https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
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Don't know why you got modded to -1. Is he seeing any positive results from using this stuff?