Ever since the Apple Watch was released back in 2015, the Cupertino giant has been focused on adding various health monitoring and safety features. In fact, in a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook touted the health features of the Apple Watch, referring to the various lives it saved over the past years. Cook also said that he aims for Apple to be known as a health company rather than a tech company in the future. Hence, a recent patent suggests that the Cupertino giant is developing a specialized watchband for its wearables that will be able to continuously monitor the blood pressure level of users.
The patent, dubbed as Stretchable Blood Pressure Cuff, was spotted in the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. It was filed on March 23 of this year and suggests that Apple is developing a stretchable watchband that will be able to measure the blood pressure of users.
Now, while the latest Apple Watch models can monitor and measure various health activities of users, including their heart rate and sleep, they cannot measure the blood pressure out of the box. Users need to rely on third-party products that include an additional pressure cuff that wraps around a user’s arm.
In the patent application, Apple explains that the specialized pressure cuff can expand, “thereby compressing one or more blood vessels in the limb and restricting and/ or stopping blood flow through the vessels.” This way the Apple Watch would be able to “determine one or more physiological parameters of a user such as blood pressure of the user.”
