Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman says Apple is working to add sleep apnea detection and blood pressure monitoring to the 2024 Apple Watch. In a report about Apple’s health-related ambitions, Gurman discusses the company’s “pathbreaking” blood pressure sensor technology:
The system is designed to just tell a user if their blood pressure is trending upward and to offer a journal for the user to jot down what was happening when hypertension occurred. To avoid potentially giving a misdiagnosis, the feature will then direct a user to talk to their doctor or check their blood pressure with a traditional cuff, which can provide exact systolic and diastolic measurements.
While a future version of the system in development will be able to provide exact numbers and even diagnose related conditions, Gurman says those features “remain far off,” he adds.
Apple is also working on an Apple Watch-based sleep apnea detection feature, that will use sleep and breathing patterns to estimate whether someone has the condition, and then instruct users to see a doctor.
As previously reported, Apple is also working on non-invasive blood glucose monitoring.
Apple has reportedly made major progress with its noninvasive blood glucose monitoring technology for the Apple Watch. The technology will allow diabetics and others to test their blood glucose levels with no need for a skin prick.
Apple’s technology includes a silicon photonics chip that uses optical absorption spectroscopy to shine specific waveforms of light from a laser under the skin to determine the concentration of glucose in the body.
However, Apple’s blood glucose monitoring efforts remain unlikely to show up in a product for “at least a few years,” according to Gurman’s latest report.
Gurman also says Apple is working on bringing hearing aid detection to AirPods in 2024. The new feature will allow AirPods to function as an over-the-counter hearing aid.
(Via MacRumors)