Apple Watch Blood Pressure Feature Hits More Snags in Apple's Testing

Apple's plan to bring blood-pressure tracking to the Apple Watch is still hitting snags, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman says that the company "continues to run into problems" while testing the feature. No other information was provided on the issues Apple is having.

Gurman has been reporting on Apple's plan to bring blood pressure monitoring since January 2022. In a November 2023 report, he said that the initial version wouldn't show a user their exact systolic and diastolic measurements, but Apple was working on a follow-up version for later that could do so.

At the time, Gurman said the feature was on the cards for the Apple Watch Series 10, but that didn't happen.

More recently, Gurman has said the feature would track whether a user's blood pressure is trending upwards and send an alert if hypertension is detected. After receiving an alert, the Apple Watch user could provide the information to a medical professional for additional testing.

Hypertension is known as a silent killer because it can go undetected and undiagnosed, leading to heart damage and death. High blood pressure often has few symptoms until it is notably advanced, and early detection via the Apple Watch has the potential to save lives.

As recently as last December, Gurman claimed that Apple was "ramping up" work on blood-pressure tracking and that the feature could arrive as soon as 2025. But going on his latest comments, even that now sounds unlikely.