Apple has pledged to identify one million people with undiagnosed high blood pressure within a year, utilising its new Apple Watch Series 11.
The Apple Watch Series 11, unveiled alongside a suite of new products including other watches, AirPods, and iPhones, features a notification system alerting users to suspected chronic high blood pressure.
Apple confirmed it is filing for regulatory approval of the technology.
The tool uses data from the watch’s heart sensor and an algorithm “looks for chronic high blood pressure by analysing how your blood vessels respond to beats of the heart”, Apple’s vice president of health Dr Sumbul Desai said.
Blood pressure can go up and down throughout the day and night so the tool works in the background and uses 30 days of data.
Users will get a notification if it is suspected that they have high blood pressure.
While Apple conceded that the app will not catch all cases, it has estimated that it will help identify a million people aged 22 and older with suspected high blood pressure in a year.
It said that the feature was developed using data from multiple studies with more than 100,000 people.
It was then validated on more than 2,000 people, Apple said.
Speaking at the launch event, Dr Desai said: “We’re thrilled to share our next advancement focused on a problem of massive proportions – high blood pressure, also known as hypertension.
“It impacts approximately 1.3 billion adults worldwide.
“The American Heart Association has referred to it as a silent killer, because it often occurs with no obvious symptoms.”
She went on: “To help, we’ve developed a ground-breaking feature that can alert you to possible hypertension just by wearing your Apple Watch.
“Using data from the optical heart sensor, the algorithm looks for chronic high blood pressure by analysing how your blood vessels respond to beats of the heart.
“The algorithm works in the background, reviewing data over 30-day periods, and will notify you if it identifies patterns of hypertension.
“We’ve developed this novel approach using advanced machine learning methods and a series of studies totalling over 100,000 participants.
“While it won’t detect all instances of hypertension, we expect to notify over one million people with undiagnosed hypertension in the first year alone, empowering them to make life saving behavioural changes or start treatment.”
Around a third of adults in the UK have high blood pressure, but many don't realise it. The only way to find out if you have high blood pressure is to have your blood pressure checked. Getting this done is easy and could save your life. #CYBPDevon
— NHS Devon (@NHSDevon) September 9, 2025
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She added: “We expect clearance from the FDA and other regulators soon, with availability in 150 countries and regions this month, including the US and Europe.”
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is very common, especially among older adults.
There are often no symptoms so people may not realise they are affected.
Having the condition puts people at higher risk of heart attack or stroke.
It can also lead to kidney failure, heart failure, problems with sight, and vascular dementia.
The new watch will also feature a new sleep feature – the Sleep Score – which tracks several factors to provide information on sleep quality.
These factors include sleep duration, bedtime “consistency”, how often a person wakes and the time spent in each stage of sleep.
“Now we’ll help you understand the quality of your sleep and how to make it more restorative with Sleep Score,” said Dr Desai.
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