Hypertension alerts now available to Apple Watch users in Australia

Announced late last year, recent Apple Watches are now approved to send hypertension alerts to Australian users after receiving regulatory approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration here.

As someone who lives with hypertension, this is something that could have given me that advice or led me towards it many years ago if available earlier. We’re told that around 1.4 billion people worldwide suffer from hypertension, but it’s undiagnosed in around 40% of those.

You go to the doctor, they routinely put a blood pressure cuff on and come up with a high reading – “white coat fever” they say, just high because you’re at the doctor. Without your own blood pressure cuff at home, how are you to know?

This is a serious health issue, easily managed with medication. As the single leading modifiable risk factor for kidney disease, strokes, and heart attacks, it makes no sense that we’re not doing more to find those suffering from high blood pressure – which is basically what hypertension is.

“Hypertension awareness in Australia is far too low, so we welcome new technologies that advise people that they might have hypertension and should seek confirmation from their doctor,” said Professor Garry Jennings, chief medical advisor at the Australian Heart Foundation. “Despite high blood pressure causing a greater risk of heart attack and stroke, only about a third of adults with hypertension are aware of it and have their blood pressure lowered to satisfactory levels.”

Unlike Samsung’s Galaxy watch, which, when calibrated (by a manual blood pressure cuff reading), can measure blood pressure on a regular basis, the Apple Watch is tuned to its own algorithm to pick up signs of hypertension.

It does this by using the Watch’s Optical Sensor to see how blood vessels react to you heartbeat. Tuned from training data from over 100,000 test participants and then clinically validated in a trial of over 2,000 – this allows your watch and phone to notify you of possible hypertension after a 30-day monitoring period.

You’ll be alerted to the risk and asked to seek additional medical advice, as well as setting up a blood pressure log.

I log my blood pressure regularly with a Withings BPM, which is a normal blood pressure cuff, but stores the results via a Bluetooth connection to my phone and in the Withings app, which is shared across to Apple’s Health app as well. You could also log the blood pressure readings manually if you have a regular non-smart blood pressure cuff.

This is yet another remarkable health feature which isn’t an extra subscription or app; it’s simply part of what you get with an Apple Watch.

Hypertension notifications will work on Apple Watch Series 9 and later, as well as Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later.