Google says its AI can spot signs of high blood pressure from an ordinary smartwatch, with no cuff, and has added it to the Google Health app

The Decoder reports that a Google Research model detects signs of high blood pressure using the pulse and motion sensors of a regular smartwatch, with no cuff needed to calibrate it. It learned from nearly 500,000 hours of sensor data and averages patterns over several days. In a study of 196 people at five US sites it identified 65.8% of those with high blood pressure, against 55.3% for a standard in-office reading. Google says the findings are in the blood pressure trends feature in the Google Health app, that the method is still research, and that it does not replace a diagnosis.

• If you wear a smartwatch and the app flags a blood pressure trend, treat it as a reason to book a proper cuff reading with a pharmacist or doctor, not as a diagnosis.
• If you have not had your blood pressure checked in the last year, get it done anyway, since Google says more than half of people with high blood pressure do not know they have it.

Source: The Decoder. This is our short summary of their reporting. The paragraphs marked "Our read" and the things to do are SeedFoundry's opinion. The summary is drafted with AI tools. Image: Google Research, from its own announcement. How we source and credit