Apple May be Building an Apple Watch With a Built-In EKG Heart Monitor

While Apple continues to lead the pack in the smartwatch market with the Apple Watch, the company continues to find new ways to expand the wearable’s functionality.

The Apple Watch is a great way to tell the time, as it should be, and a quick way to look at your apps without needing to pull out your phone. But, more than that, it’s also a great gadget for keeping tabs on your health and fitness, which has quickly become a major focus for the company behind the popular smartwatch.

Now, Bloomberg reports that Apple may continue to double down on that health and fitness initiative by building an Apple Watch variant with a built-in EKG heart monitor. The report includes a bit related to the testing of the feature on the pre-release wearable:

“A version being tested requires users to squeeze the frame of the Apple Watch with two fingers from the hand that’s not wearing the device, one of the people said. It then passes an imperceptible current across the person’s chest to track electrical signals in the heart and detect any abnormalities like irregular heart rates.”

The Apple Watch does technically support a third-party source for an EKG heart monitor in the form of a smart band, which is FDA-approved. However, having the feature be a built-in option would make the Apple Watch that much more important for customers who need to, or just want to, keep an eye on their health and their heart.

Apple is expected to launch a new version of the Apple Watch sometime before the end of 2018. It is possible that this version with the built-in EKG heart monitor could make the cut for that time frame, but nothing is certain right now.