Galaxy Watch 4 gets ECG and blood pressure tracking in Australia

If your main reason for choosing a smartwatch is for its health-tracking features, Samsung wearables are pretty useful for that, aside from the usual productivity and communication purposes. The newly-announced Galaxy Watch 4 will become even more useful in that aspect as it will get ECG and blood pressure monitoring features in Australia. Both of these features need regulatory body approval in each country before they are enabled. By September 10, owners of the smartwatches in Australia will be able to unlock these tracking features.

Samsung previously announced that the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic will indeed have ECG and blood pressure monitoring in Australia. So now that they were able to get approval from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods and the Australian Government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, these features will be officially unlocked by September 10. This is also the date when the smartwatches will be officially available there.

The ECG monitoring on the smartwatch is actually registered as a medical device when connected to a compatible Galaxy smartphone. It gives users an electrocardiogram reading through a sensor on the smartwatch and will display heart rhythm as well as either atrial fibrillation or sinus rhythm. For the blood pressure monitoring feature, users will first need to calibrate with a traditional cuff monitoring device. It is also recommended that they calibrate every 28 days.

The good news for owners of older Galaxy smartwatches is that the Galaxy Watch 3 and the Galaxy Watch Active 2 will also be getting these two features, at least in Australia. There is no specific date as to when this will be available but they did say that a software update will arrive in the coming months. It will probably function the same way with the Galaxy Watch 4 devices as there’s no mention of any differences for now.

To access both the blood pressure and ECG monitoring, users will have to install the Samsung Health Monitor app into their Galaxy smartphone and then connect it to the Galaxy smartwatch. Hopefully, more countries will also approve both features as they’re pretty useful when it comes to monitoring possible heart and health issues.