Hypertension Notifications Available Today On Apple Watch

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Starting today, Apple Watch introduces its hypertension notifications feature in Malaysia, designed to alert users if signs of chronic high blood pressure, or hypertension, are detected.

Hypertension is the leading modifiable risk factor for heart attack, stroke and kidney disease, affecting an estimated 1.4 billion adults globally. It is frequently undiagnosed, as it often presents without symptoms, many people do not see a doctor regularly, and even during clinical visits it can be missed through a single measurement.

Hypertension notifications on Apple Watch use data from the optical heart sensor to analyse how a user’s blood vessels respond to each heartbeat. The algorithm operates passively in the background, reviewing data over 30-day periods, and notifies users if it detects consistent signs of hypertension. These notifications provide users with insights into their cardiovascular health simply by wearing their Apple Watch, enabling them to make behavioural changes or seek treatment to reduce the risk of long-term health complications.

As with Apple’s other health features, hypertension notifications are grounded in scientific validation. The feature was developed using advanced machine learning models trained on data from multiple studies involving more than 100,000 participants, and its performance was validated through a clinical study of over 2,000 participants. While the feature does not detect all cases of hypertension, it is estimated that Apple Watch could notify more than one million people worldwide with previously undiagnosed hypertension within its first year of availability.

If a user receives a hypertension notification, Apple recommends logging blood pressure readings for seven days using a third-party blood pressure cuff and sharing the results with a healthcare provider at the next medical visit, in line with current clinical guidelines for hypertension diagnosis and management.