The HeartWise Blood Pressure Monitor iPhone app ($1.99) keeps things fairly simple. It’s a quick way to effectively track and chart changes in your blood pressure, pulse, and weight. By entering those three variables into the iPhone app as often as you like, a picture will slowly form of your general heart health.
You’re able to chart these elements on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis. The blood pressure chart is even color-coded to show when you’ve entered a danger zone. Unfortunately, while it is easy to manually take your pulse or type in your weight, there is no real way to get your blood pressure without having access to a blood pressure cuff.
It’s odd that this isn’t explained in the iPhone app, considering this doesn’t seem like a device many people would have around their home. I realize it may not be HeartWise’s responsibility to be an information bank on blood pressure information, but it seems like more care could have been taken if you’re going to make blood pressure recording a focus of your iPhone app.
Other than that complaint, Heartwise Blood Pressure Monitor is a functionally useful app. The charts it creates could certainly make it easier for someone to monitor their heart health, and the additional ability to export data from the app and have it emailed to you is fantastic. So many data-oriented iPhone apps seem to ignore this option that it’s good to see it actually taken advantage of.
HeartWise may not be the perfect medical iPhone app, but it does enough well to make it worth a look if you’re in need of an iPhone-friendly way to monitor your blood pressure.
