Hypertension notifications are now available on Apple Watch in India. Basically, your watch can now nudge you if it picks up signs of chronic high blood pressure. Considering how common hypertension is worldwide—and how sneaky the symptoms can be—this is actually pretty useful. A lot of people miss the signs even with regular checkups, and if you’re not someone who gets routine health screenings… well, the odds of it being undiagnosed go up even more.
The hypertension notifications feature tries to close that gap by quietly monitoring your heart patterns in the background for over a 30-day period. If it spots anything concerning, it lets you know so you can take the necessary action and make lifestyle changes before things escalate. With pollution levels rising across India and their likely impact on blood pressure, this is a very good time for Apple to have launched the feature in the country.
Like most of Apple’s health features, this one is also backed by solid scientific validation, and was developed using advanced machine learning and training data from multiple studies with over 100,000 participants. The whole system was then put through a clinical study with more than 2,000 people to make sure it actually works. So you know this is not a gimmick.
If you unfortunately get such a notification, Apple recommends taking a proper blood pressure reading using a third-party pressure cuff for a week and then getting them checked with a healthcare provider.
All in all, it’s great to see Apple adding features that help catch early warning signs of high blood pressure. Now, if they could just work on prices that don’t give us high blood pressure, that would be perfect!
