Google's AI detects high blood pressure from a regular smartwatch without a cuff

What happened

Google's AI detects high blood pressure from a regular smartwatch without a cuff, according to The Decoder. Google Research built an AI that spots signs of high blood pressure using only the pulse and motion sensors in a standard smartwatch, no cuff needed. The method is already live in the Google Health app, though it doesn't replace a formal diagnosis. Google is an Internet and software company based in Mountain View.

The AI relies on two sensors already built into modern watches—a pulse sensor and a motion sensor—according to a Google blog post .

The study was published in Nature . A neural network learned from nearly 500,000 hours of sensor data by comparing short segments and figuring out which ones belonged to the same person, picking up typical pulse and heartbeat patterns without any diagnoses to guide it.

The system then averages these patterns over several days and calculates a probability for high blood pressure. Google's health model SensorFM also learns from smartwatch data.