Withings Blood Pressure Monitor

Rub it better, drink water, eat more vegetables, come back next week if it hasn’t fallen off... they might have plenty of letters after their name, but sometimes it feels like GPs are just dishing out prescriptions for the bleedin’ obvious.

Well, rather than leaving them to manage your wellbeing, why not take charge of it yourself? With the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor connected to your Apple device you can keep constant tabs on your health, and even compare your readings to recommendations by the World Health Organisation.

Simply wrap this smart-looking device around your arm, plug it into your iOS device (iPod, iPhone or iPad) and the app will boot up automatically. Follow the onscreen instructions to inflate the cuff and measure your blood pressure in seconds. The app will automatically display your systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and pulse. What’s more it will save all of your readings, so that you can see, week on week or day by day, how you are progressing. It will even plot your results in a curve so you can easily spot trends or spikes.

Upload your results online to Google Health and you can open up even more options for analysis, as well as guidelines and comparisons with WHO recommended figures. So the next time you visit your GP for a check-up, hit them with some fat stats and make their lives easier as well.