Apple Watch Can Now Warn Canadians About High Blood Pressure

Apple Watch users in Canada are getting a new health feature that can warn them if they might have high blood pressure—also known as hypertension. The update starts rolling out today.

Hypertension is one of the biggest causes of heart attacks, strokes, and kidney disease. It often goes unnoticed because it usually has no symptoms. Apple’s new feature uses the watch’s heart sensor to check how a person’s blood vessels respond to their heartbeat. Over about 30 days, the watch quietly reviews the data in the background. If it spots signs of consistently high blood pressure, it sends a notification.

Users can turn on “Hypertension Notifications” in the Health app on their iPhone. The idea is to give people a heads-up before things get serious — so they can make lifestyle changes or see a doctor.

Hypertension affects approximately 8 million Canadians — about one in four — and this number will only grow as our population ages,” said Dr. Heather Ross, head of cardiology at University Health Network’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. “Despite being treatable, it frequently goes undetected and is a leading contributor to cardiovascular disease, including stroke, coronary disease, dementia, and heart failure. One of the greatest challenges is improving screening to enable earlier diagnosis and treatment. That’s why hypertension notifications on Apple Watch are a true breakthrough and could be a real game changer.

Apple says the feature was trained using data from more than 100,000 people and tested in a clinical study with over 2,000 participants. It won’t catch every case, but Apple expects it could alert over 1 million people worldwide in the first year.

If someone gets a notification, they should confirm it with a traditional blood pressure cuff and share the results with their doctor. The Health app can now help users log those readings and generate a report to bring to their next appointment.

Last month, Health Canada approved hypertension warnings for Apple Watch, so it was a matter of time before Apple made an official announcement, and here we are today. Great news for Canadians with an Apple Watch Series 9 or Ultra 2 (or newer) with an iPhone 11 or later.

How to turn hypertension notifications on? They are now live in Canada. Just launch the Health app, search for ‘hypertension’ and you’ll see the option. It may explain they are not available in your region, but if you wait a few seconds, it will enable itself to be configured. Just follow the prompts to get set up as it’s really easy. It just asks if you are 22 or older and if you have been diagnosed before.

Need a new Apple Watch? The Series 10 is on sale right now on Amazon.ca for 30% off at $413, one of the lowest prices to date.