The Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 was released with a blood pressure monitor feature present, but this feature has remained inactive until last month when South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) cleared it as a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD). This means that the Galaxy Watch Active 2 will now be able to monitor your blood pressure.
However, this feature will only be available in the third quarter of the year and will be integrated into future Samsung smartwatches. Moreover, to be able to use the Galaxy Active 2 to monitor blood pressure, it must be calibrated with a traditional cuff blood pressure monitor.
“The Samsung Health Monitor app has the potential to help millions of people around the world who are affected by high blood pressure,” says Taejong Jay Yang, Corporate SVP and Head of Health Team, Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. This feature goes a long way to show that smart wearables could help people around the world monitor health issues with the promising potentials of integrating software into hardware. High blood pressure when left untreated can result in many complications which include heart, kidney, and brain diseases.
Meanwhile, while the MFDS has cleared the Samsung health monitor app as a SaMD, it doesn’t mean it’s cleared in other countries, but going further I expect more approvals to follow suit in other countries. Although, this post at XDA-Developers already shows how you can monitor blood pressure with Active 2 even if it has not been cleared in your country, but that’s at your own risk.
