A Fitbit watch will have the ability to monitor blood pressure before an Apple watch, experts claim.
Mark Gurman from Bloomberg is confident that Apple will be able to bring blood pressure monitoring to market; however, it will take years of work before we see this.
A newly revealed patent shows that Fitbit is on a mission to incorporate a blood pressure monitoring option in a smartwatch that does not need the monthly calibration.
Instructions will follow as to how much pressure should be applied and the heartbeat is measured through a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor that works optically.
The patent said: “A user applies a variable pressure to his or her blood vessels while a PPG sensor measures the amplitude of blood volume pulses.
“The resulting PPG signal and associated pressure data is used to calculate blood pressure. Standard approaches to determining blood pressure from oscillometric data can be used.”
