Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to smart clothing and accessories like a stretchable health band that could measure health vitals and even provide another way, beyond Apple Watch, for taking an ECG and may in fact work in concert with Apple Watch to take more accurate ECG readings.

You know when Apple engineer Daniel Podhajny is listed as one of the inventors, it's a serious invention. Podhajny is listed on many Nike patents while working on Nike Flyknit breathable material runners.

Apple's invention covers a fabric-based item may be provide with a stretchable band. The stretchable band may be formed from a ring-shaped strip of stretchable fabric having an opening configured to fit around a body part of a user. Circuitry may be coupled to strands of material in the stretchable band. The circuitry may include sensor circuitry for making measurement on the body part such as electrocardiogram measurements, blood pressure measurements, respiration rate measurements, and other measurements.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic diagram of an illustrative fabric-based item; FIG. 2 is a perspective view of an illustrative item such as a band that is formed from elastic fabric.

Further, FIG. 2 may use devices #22 to gather any suitable input and provide any suitable output. As an example, item #10 may use blood pressure sensors to gather blood pressure information, may use heart rate sensors to gather heart rate information, may include blood sugar sensors for gathering blood sugar levels, may use blood oxygen sensors to measure a user's blood oxygen level, may use accelerometers to measure a user's activity, etc.

If desired, accelerometers and/or other sensors may gather information on a user's respiration rate (e.g., by extracting respiration rate information from accelerometer readings). Health data, intentional user input (e.g., button press input on force sensors, touch sensors, and/or other input devices, voice commands gathered with a microphone, gesture input, tap input, etc.), environmental readings, and/or other information on the user and the user's surroundings may be gathered by devices #22 and processed by control circuitry #12.

The Control circuitry may also use the output devices of input-output devices #22 to provide haptic output, audio output, visual output (e.g., status light indicator output, display output such as displayed images of text, graphics, and/or video, etc.), and/or other output may be provided.

For more details, review Apple's granted patent US 11484264 B2.