Britt Jones
A warning has been given to those who use their Apple Watch for blood pressure monitoring.
Among the tracking features on smart watches are usually things like heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure monitoring that you can use to detect if your stats are higher than average.
However, new research has come out to reveal that this could be giving you ‘false reassurance’ that you’re healthy, with researchers calling Apple Watch's feature for spotting signs of high blood pressure into question.
According to the University of Utah Health and the University of Pennsylvania, while the US Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to use the Apple Watch's hypertension (high blood pressure) feature last year, researchers explained it should not be used in place of proper medical testing.
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Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, experts say they found discrepancies in who would be alerted through the feature.
"According to Apple's reported test performance, 41.2% of individuals with undiagnosed hypertension would receive an alert for potentially having hypertension, and 58.8% would not," the researchers wrote. "Among those without hypertension, 92.3% would not receive an alert and 7.7% would receive an inappropriate alert."
However, Apple says its 'hypertension (high blood pressure) notifications feature’ is not ‘intended to diagnose, treat or aid in the management of hypertension or other conditions such as blood clots, stroke, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure or high cholesterol’.
This is because it cannot detect a heart attack, but can notify a user about a pattern of chronic high blood pressure symptoms via its heart sensor and 30-day evaluation.
“Apple indicates that the feature is not intended to diagnose hypertension and is designed to prompt users to seek clinical evaluation if hypertension is suspected," the team added. “However, false reassurance may discourage some individuals with undiagnosed hypertension from obtaining appropriate screening or engaging with the healthcare system, resulting in missed opportunities for early detection and treatment.”
The study went on to suggest that the feature was less reliable for older adults, who are more at risk of hypertension.
The team wrote of their findings: "With more than 200 million Apple Watch users worldwide, the hypertension notification feature offers new opportunities to identify adults with undiagnosed hypertension, but with potential for hypertension misclassification as well. A large proportion of individuals unaware of their hypertension may be made aware.
"However, an even larger proportion of individuals with undiagnosed hypertension could receive no alert at all."
UNILAD has reached out to Apple for comment.