Apple expects to notify 100M people that they have hypertension in a year

It’s incredible how many health issues people have but aren’t aware of. I advise people find doctors and facilities that are friendly towards getting more diagnostics not less. Blood work and other types of tests can help you fix things early.

Cue another 10 minute “Apple Watch Saved My Life!” segment in next year’s Keynote, as is tradition at this point.

Every 20 mmHg increase in your systolic blood pressure, or 10 mmHg increase in diastolic blood pressure, doubles your mortality. And only 23% of people with high blood pressure have it under control.

Pretty massive implications for public health.

I wrote about some of the science behind on-the-wrist blood pressure monitoring and public health implications here:

https://www.empirical.health/blog/apple-watch-blood-pressure...

Assuming you can afford it, or have the will to address the problems.

Pretty comprehensive panels are available online for <$200: https://www.empirical.health/product/comprehensive-health-pa...

I am looking forward to this feature, but worry about it's accuracy.

Every time I go to the doctor and they hook me up to a blood pressure monitor, it comes back way high (like 160/90). I then request a manual check and it always comes back normal. I didn't figure this out until after they prescribed me calcium channel blockers (and they didn't do anything). Something about the shape of my arm or something.

Anyway point being that a faulty reading led to me being prescribed meds I did not need. Hoping this doesn't lead to more of the same.

From the article: "it will warn of a potential issue rather than diagnose it"

Seems like lawyer speak for "please don't sue us if we get this wrong" but I suspect the ad campaign for this feature will suggest otherwise.

The reason they do this is that their algorithm makes errors, and setting it this way means they can tune for a high specificity (giving up some sensitivity).

The breathing disturbances notifications work in a similar way. They alert you to potential sleep apnea, but then you need to do an at-home or in-lab sleep study in order to get a diagnosis.

I think the headline is wrong: at 20:18 in Apple's presentation, the presenter said they expect to notify one million people during the year, not 100 million.

That’s great. I assume they make it easier to get the work done? I feel like it’s always an uphill battle to convince physicians to do some diagnostic test that has no downside.

100%. Not eating spoonfuls of Crisco/shortening like peanut butter is an easy life change. "Reduce chronic stress" is non-trivial.

Time to buy stock in companies that produce blood pressure medication?

That privacy policy is hilarious.

Is that how we sibsidize the advertized cost of $1500 down to $200

Quest and Labcorp have made it fairly easy to get diagnostic bloodwork yourself, without involving a doctor. It's a lot more than $200 though.

It's actually cheaper for me to go to one of these labs than to talk to a doctor and deal with insurance.

A lot of people don’t want to know.

I've heard inaccuracy could be dependent on how your arm is held/supported/relaxed when you are attached to the automatic cuff.

I always end up with my arm almost shoulder height resting on some bin on the side of the blood pressure device cart thing.

I wonder why they can't use an ergonomic chair with two appropriate-height support arms.

It's because the notification dark pattern that always says "remind me later" instead of "never remind me again"... :)

About as useful as the annoying high volume notifications. No substitute to professional equipment and a doctors visit.

> No substitute to professional equipment and a doctors visit.

Of course. The purpose of this feature is to tell the right people that they might have a problem, and that they should ask a doctor about it - just like they've done in the past with AFib detection.

The title here says 100M, but the actual presentation says 1M?

Like the other commenter says, it's probably a matter of how your arm is (both position and not moving it at all) during the testing, those automatic machines are super fickle about it compared to the manual "pumps" ones.

Your doctor should see it though, unless they don't stay next to you and thus can't (but I know mine use it more like a first control test, and would always do a manual test before prescribing anything).

YMMV, I'm in France.

PS : with that said, this here is even more different since it's in a watch, and I would not trust it for anything other than "hey, maybe go check at a doctor"