Apple Watch Series 11 models that go on sale this Friday include the function of notifying users who could have high blood pressure, a characteristic that the company developed using artificial intelligence (AI) instead of a tension.
The notification function, which will also work in previous models to the Apple Watch Series 9, arose from the application of AI models to existing sensor data, said Sumbul Ahmad Desai, Apple’s health vice president.
Apple had been interested in trying to identify arterial hypertension for years, he told Reuters.
This condition affects more than 1,000 million people worldwide, but half of the adults who suffer are not diagnosed, partly because the standard to measure blood pressure – a bracelet called sphygmomanometer – is something that many people only find in the doctor’s office.
Apple used the AI to order the data of 100,000 people registered in a study of the heart and movement, which originally launched in 2019, to see if it could find characteristics in the signal data of the main sensor of the clock for the heart that could later collate with the traditional measurements of blood pressure, said Desai.
After multiple layers of automatic learning, Apple reached an algorithm that later validated with a specific study of 2000 participants.
Apple’s privacy measures mean that “one of the ironies is that we do not obtain many data” outside the context of large -scale studies, said Desai. But the data of these studies “give us an idea of scientifically, what are some other signals that are worth following (…) These studies are incredibly powerful.”
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New Apple Watch function could diagnose hypertension
The function, which received the approval of the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA) of the United States, does not directly measure blood pressure, but notifies users who could have it high and encourage them to use a bracelet to measure it and talk to a doctor.
Apple plans to deploy this function in more than 150 countries. According to AMI Bhatt, director of Innovation of the American College of Cardiology, could help people discover hypertension and reduce related conditions, such as myocardial infarctions, strokes and renal diseases.
Bhatt, who said that his opinions are his and do not represent those of the school, said that Apple seems to have been careful to avoid false positives who could alarm users.
However, the iPhone manufacturer should emphasize that the new function does not replace traditional measurements or professional diagnosis.
“There is also the risk of false tranquility: those who do not receive an alert can erroneously assume that they have no hypertension,” Bhatt said in an interview.
With Reuters information
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