Some people need to check their blood pressure a little more than others, and wearables don’t quite do that yet. Fortunately, Withings has its metaphorical finger on the pulse.
There are lots of different devices in our life, and they range from being useful for talking to friends to tracking your health. In fact, many of the devices we wear handle health applications quite well.
The introduction of pedometers meant you could start tracking how many footsteps you make on a regular basis, and factoring that into understanding your health. Tie that into more health data such as heart rate, blood oxygen, and even sweat sensing, and you can get an idea of your overall picture of health, which a combination of AI, software smarts, and solid reporting can deliver the sort of information you might have had to see a health practitioner for in the past.
But not everything can be wrapped into a small wearable that also shows you the time. Some things require specific technology, such as when you check blood pressure, which typically needs to inflate a cuff around an arm to block the flow of blood, shortly before measuring the blood pressure afterwards.
As it stands now, no wearable comes with the ability tighten a cuff around your arm, nor would it be the sort of thing wearable makers would throw into development. This sort of technology is typically used on the upper arm, and not the wrist, and that’s a place wearables typically don’t go.
But there are gadgets made to work here, and the blood pressure monitor is one of them.
Like many things these days, you might expect a degree of smarts inside them, and we’re beginning to see evidence of that.
Withings’ latest gadget is built with that mind, as its BPM Connect provides a blood pressure monitor with a way of sending information back to your phone for logging and storing, while also not being so dependent on a phone thanks to its own small LED screen.
The Withings BPM Connect is a rechargeable blood pressure monitor, but you may not need to charge it all that often, with up to six months of battery per recharge.
Perhaps most interestingly is what the Withings app can do with the data, with support to send blood pressure measurements and heart rate to a doctor or healthcare provider, effectively providing a diagnostic tool available at home.
Available for $179.95 in Australia, the Withings BPM Connect provides a relatively compact and smart approach to measuring blood pressure, and may well be one of the first smart health diagnostic gadgets you want in your life.
It won’t likely be the last, however, and with wearables integrating more useful technologies, such as blood oxygen sensors to monitor the possibility of sleep apnoea, it’s more likely the first of many health gadgets you can expect in your life.
