Omron's smartwatch blood pressure monitor cleared by FDA, launches in January
/The HeartGuide watch uses a flexible synthetic band to inflate and maintain its shape to comfortably take an oscillometric wrist blood pressure on the fly.
Apple drew up a patent for a new kind of blood pressure monitor
/Two years ago, a handful of Apple employees dreamed up a device that would take the company beyond the world of healthcare apps, and into healthcare products. That device isn’t the Apple Watch, at least not yet. Instead, it seems to be a device whose function could very well be rolled into future Apple Watch devices down the line. Apple applied for a patent for said device in a listing that became public today, and it looks... underwhelming.
Read MoreAnother Risky 'BP Monitor' App - Puts patients at risk with claims to measure multiple cardiovascular parameters
/Over the past few years, we've covered a number of health apps that we believed put patients at risk through dubious claims about what they can measure or treat. In 2014, we detailed an app called Instant Blood Pressure, which claimed to measure blood pressure just by having users put the microphone over their chest and finger over the camera. About a year after our initial article, it was pulled first from the Google Play app store then the iTunes app store. And earlier this year, a study conducted by some of my colleagues at Johns Hopkins showed Instant Blood Pressure to be highly inaccurate and detailed how those inaccuracies could put patients at risk. Given the attention that study got in the lay press as well as Apple's moves to scale up their healthcare expertise, I assumed that the review of health apps, particularly those that claim to measure or treat something, would be tightened up.
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