Apple adds hypertension and sleep-quality monitoring to Watch Ultra 3, Series 11

At its fall product event today, Apple updated its line of smartwatches, including the introduction of features for monitoring blood pressure and analyzing the quality of your sleep.

Apple Watch Series 11

The Apple Watch 11 is supposed to be able to alert users about "possible hypertension" by using data from an optical heart rate sensor "to analyze how a user’s blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart," per its announcement.

According to Apple's presentation, the smartwatch will look for chronic hypertension over 30-day periods. Apple's presentation noted that the Watch Series 11 won't be able to identify all hypertension, but the company said that it expects to notify over 1 million people with undiagnosed hypertension during the feature's first year of availability.

The feature is based on machine-learning and training data built from multiple studies examining over 100,000 people combined, Apple noted.

Apple said it expects the blood pressure monitoring feature to receive Food and Drug Administration clearance soon and to get approval in 150 regions this month.

The new watch will use a 5G modem and also introduce a feature that provides wearers with a "sleep score" that's based on the duration of their sleep, the consistency of their bedtime, how often they awaken from their sleep, and how much time they spend in each sleep stage. The Watch will analyze those factors every night and then provide a breakdown of how each score is calculated. The feature is based on an algorithm tested with 5 million nights of sleep data, Apple said.