Omron, maker of home blood pressure monitors, has revealed a smartwatch that will do the same from the wrist. Omron told us about the watch last year, where it went under the name of Project Zero, but it's now called Omron HeartGuide and is set to hit the market later this year.
Before then, Omron needs to get FDA approval. This is what will separate Omron's watch from other wearables that claim to track blood pressure. Omron's is a first in this regard, utilizing an inflatable cuff that will take readings through the day and night.
Read this: Blood pressure is wearable tech's next challenge
The watch will take oscillometric readings at the press of a button. It can also be set to take automatic readings through the night, as this is particularly important for hypertension patients. Heart attack risk is also higher in the morning.
This data is then poured into the smartphone app, and can be shared with your doctor.
But what makes the HeartGuide so impressive is that it manages to do all of this while looking just like a smartwatch. It will come in three sizes - small, medium, large - with the medium measuring 46mm side (which is the one we got to try). It also performs a bunch of smartwatch basics like notifications, step and sleep tracking (that's all done through movement data though).
Omron's Jeffrey Ray told us that the band is reinforced from the outside with a material used in the airbags of NASA's Mars Lander. So yeah, it's pretty damn solid. Battery should last for 2 weeks, or 50 inflations, which as any smartwatch fan will know is pretty good.
Omron will submit the smartwatch to the FDA in March and hopes to get it on the market by late Fall. It's targeting $350 right now, but that's not set in stone.
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By Hugh Langley
Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.
Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.
Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.
He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.