CES 2019: Omron HeartGuide watch is a real blood pressure machine
Smartwatches
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I've been waiting for this one a long time.
This is the first wrist worn blood pressure machine that has a real blood pressure machine.
They call those sphygmomenometers in the medical business, the one there with the big cuff that goes around your arm when you go to the doctor's office.
This is that, but look how small it is, just exited FDA clearance, and ready to go to the market at $499 is the Omran Heart guide blood pressure watch.
The way this thing works, is you put your arm up here at about heart height, because you want this to be at the same level as your heart, and you push that button.
And that's it.
Sit there for a few seconds, and it takes a medical grade blood pressure check.
Relays that to an app, which keeps a history of your blood pressure readings, and those can be Send to your doctor if they want it.
You said you were feeling kind of weird the other day, if you took your readings like you should have, they'll say send me the snapshot of those readings, let me see them.
So how does this thing actually works, it's a wonder of miniaturization frankly.
You have two bands.
There's this inner one where all the work is done.
This has a tiny air bladder in here which pumps up just like the one at the doctor's office and then you've got a sensor pad.
on the bottom of the watch and that's going to pick up your systolic and diastolic, basically your high and your low blood pressure boundaries, just like at the doctors office.
That's why this got approved relatively quickly, because it works the same way.
When all that's done the data goes to the associated app wirelessly.
It's called heart advisor, and that gives a record of a history of how your blood pressure has been trending.
They're the real insights.
And that data can be shared in the future automatically but now manually to your doctor or to Samsung platform, Google platform.
It could be a Walgreen's platform in the future.
And today already at launch To the Apple Health Records aspect of iOS on your iPhone.
All of these are platforms to gain insights into your health, not just to gather raw data.
It's about answers, not just data points.
Again, $499 goes on market for pre-ordered January 8, available direct to consumer only to start from Omron itself But after a few months, it'll be heading out to the usual retailers.
Why am I so excited about this technology in general, because it goes after three things.
One, this is the silent killer.
It's called that for a reason.
High Blood Pressure is not something that lets you know it's destroying and ravaging your body until it's done so.
Number two, a lot of folks only have high blood pressure in the doctor's office.
They don't really have high blood pressure.
But they get treated for it.
That doesn't make sense.
And there's a third category of folks who have high blood pressure and it doesn't show up in the doctor's office, and this will help catch that as well and prevent those effects down the road.
It's really great technology that we're seeing come out of miniaturization and transfer of data.
