Apple has focused on marketing the Apple Watch as a health device to broaden its appeal beyond keeping time. Apple has added the ability to monitor a user's heart with an ECG sensor system; monitor women's health with Cycle Tracking via temperature sensors; monitor your sleep cycles and measure Blood Oxygen. One of Apple's future health measurement systems will include measuring blood pressure. We began to cover this trend back in October 2017. A few other blood pressure related patents covering Apple Watch and accessories relating to blood pressure measuring could be found here: 01, 02, 03 04

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that take an entirely different approach to measuring blood pressure by using a  possible future version of their Beddit Sleep Monitoring System. Apple acquired company 'Beddit' in 2016.

In today's granted patent, Apple introduces a monitoring system configured to measure the user's health-related parameters while in a certain state.  Based on whether the user is in the certain state and/or one or more criteria being met, the monitoring system can perform a physiological measurement such as a blood pressure measurement.

Physiological measurements such as blood pressure measurements can be used to determine a user's health conditions. Performing frequent physiological measurements and tracking the measurements can help predict and/or detect certain health conditions (e.g., cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular mortality, target organ damage, etc.) and assist in determining the effectiveness of a prescribed treatment.

In some instances, detecting the health condition can be more accurate when the physiological measurement such as a blood pressure measurement is taken while the user is sleeping or in some other state or condition.

One way to measure the user's blood pressure is to use an ambulatory blood pressure monitor (ABPM), which may include a cuff that inflates to occlude blood flow in the user's arm, for example. In some occurrences, such as with a monitoring system that inflates the cuff at predetermined intervals, inflation may disrupt the user, and in instances where the user is asleep, the sleep of the user's partner. It may be desirable for the monitoring system to dynamically inflate the cuff and perform physiological measurements based on one or more criteria being met. The criteria can be based on various states or conditions (e.g., the user's sleep state, the number of successful measurements, etc.) such that user disruption can be reduced and the measurement accuracy and/or efficiency can be enhanced.

Apple's patent FIG. 1A below illustrates a block diagram of an exemplary monitoring system; FIG. 1B illustrates a top view of an exemplary monitoring system; and FIG. 2 illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary process of operation of the monitoring system.

Apple's patent FIG. 4 below illustrates an exemplary time plot showing the dynamic adjustment of the measurement thresholds.  The threshold can be set to a first threshold 480. During time intervals 1-3, a blood pressure measurement 490 can be taken (e.g., due to one or more criteria being met). 

(Click on image to Enlarge)

Apple's patent covers the following detailed segments:

• The Monitoring System
• Monitoring System
• Measurement Criteria
• Dynamic Adjustment of the Measurement Thresholds
• Dynamic Adjustment of the Measurement Parameters
• Aborting or Annotating the Measurements

You could review these detailed segments by reviewing Apple's granted patent US 11504013 B1

Inventors

Derek Young: Research and Development, Health Technologies (10 yr. veteran)

German Alvarez: Firmware Engineer Manager (Health Technologies)

Joseph Lee: R&D Engineer at Apple - Health Tech

Manda Paul: Vision Health (Research Scientist; Cardiac Health – Biomedical Engineer)

Santiago Quijano:  R&D in Health Technologies - Embedded Engineer.

Alexander Chan: Was a Health Algorithms Manager for 3 years and is now at "Beacon Biosignals."