Apple Rumored To Release EarPods That Measure Your Blood Pressure

Current Apple Earpods. Image via Apple

Apple is apparently set on releasing earpods that will deliver physiological data to your mobile device, and help keep track of your health. The Cupertino company is apparently set on offering a series of health related features in its next operating system release, and it appears your iPhone will begin  collecting information about your health before 2014 is done.

The earpods are apparently designed to measure things like a user’s blood pressure and and heart rate using special sensors embedded in them. AppleInsider reckons that though the source of the rumor is less than trustworthy, it is supported by work Apple has been doing over the last few years. Everyone seems certain the company is putting together a Healthbook application to track biometrics. The earphones would make perfect sense as an augmentation of that plan.

Apple Earphone Sensors Supported By Patents

According to Apple Insider, the sensor weighted earpod rumors that arrived this morning have a basis in research Apple has been working on. As fr back as 2006 Apple filed a patent protecting the use of various kinds of sensors in a user’s accessories, or even in their devices. The company was also granted a patent on biometric monitoring through earphones earlier this year.

The rumors originally appeared on tech-centered social network Secret, and information on that network is not quite credible. Users on that network are encouraged to put anonymous stories out there, whether they be fact or fiction. That makes it fairly likely that the earphone story, which was originally picked up over at Reddit, difficult to put stock in.

Apple Dives Into Health Records

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), if the company has its way, will soon have more information on the average iPhone user than their doctor does. The company has never been the massive information collector that Google and Facebook have sold themselves as, but that appears to be changing. Siri and the iPhone 6 will soon become the center of some people’s fitness regimes.

Other than offering extra functionality and a plausible impetus to go buy the latest wearable out of Cupertino, it’s difficult to tell why Apple is heading into this particular sphere. The company cannot sell this as healthcare, as that would open it up to far too many legal issues, and selling it as a fitness app with extra information seems less than useful.

Apple is probably going to release an iWatch in the coming months, and the company is likely to include Healthbook in its next iOS update. The chance of a pair of blood pressure monitoring earphones arriving seems less than the previous instances, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Everyone is presuming that Apple has a plan with its fitness offerings, if it releases a pair of sensor ridden earphones that assumption will still fall into place.

Disclosure: Author represents that he has no position in any stocks mentioned in this article at the time this article was submitted.