Swiss-developed system brings longitudinal blood pressure monitoring to the US, reflecting broader shift toward continuous preventive health.

Blood pressure is one of medicine’s oldest biomarkers; it is also one of its most neglected. While cardiovascular risk accumulates over decades, measurement often remains confined to fleeting moments – a hurried clinic appointment, an annual health check or the occasional home cuff reading. Hilo – the Swiss healthtech company known as Aktiia until last year’s rebrand – believes that disconnect is long overdue for revision, announcing the US launch of Hilo Core, a wearable blood pressure health system designed to provide continuous insights into cardiovascular health rather than isolated snapshots.

The system combines a wrist-worn optical sensor with an FDA-cleared connected cuff and companion app, using periodic cuff calibration alongside optical measurements to generate approximately 30 to 35 blood pressure readings each day. By combining those measurements with sleep, heart rate and steps data, Hilo hopes to give users a richer understanding of how everyday behaviors influence one of the most important determinants of long-term health.

Longevity.Technology: Blood pressure has none of the glamour of epigenetic clocks or cellular reprogramming; it doesn’t even have the glamour of a drug. It is, nonetheless, one of the most consequential determinants of how long and how well we live – and one of the few genuinely modifiable ones. Hilo’s real contribution isn’t removing the cuff. It’s the shift underneath: from the occasional clinical snapshot to something closer to a running record of cardiovascular life as it’s actually lived – sleep, movement, stress, treatment, the small daily decisions that rarely survive a ten-minute consultation. Continuous glucose monitoring got there first. Both point the same direction: away from episodic sick-care, toward earlier and more personal prevention. A risk factor with no symptoms is easy to ignore when it only gets checked twice a year. Data on its own won’t lower anyone’s blood pressure. But visibility creates the feedback loop that changes behavior, sharpens adherence, and catches vascular damage before it sets in for good. Longevity science tends to look toward tomorrow’s breakthroughs; extending healthspan might depend just as much on reading today’s signals properly.

A different picture of blood pressure

Hilo emerged from more than two decades of Swiss research, has racked up over 200,000 users worldwide and points to eight clinical studies backing its optical blood pressure technology. The system skips the repeated cuff inflation altogether: it reads blood pressure from photoplethysmographic signals at the wrist, with the cuff stepping in only periodically, to keep calibration honest.

For Stefan Petzinger, Chief Executive Officer of Hilo, the value lies less in generating more numbers than in revealing patterns.

“Hilo represents a fundamental shift in how we approach blood pressure,” he said, adding that measuring blood pressure in isolated moments has left “critical gaps in understanding.” Long-term, real-world insights, he said, can help individuals and clinicians make earlier and better informed decisions about cardiovascular health.

The logic reflects something wider in digital health: a shift away from measuring moments and toward tracking trajectories. Glucose, sleep, cardiac rhythm, blood pressure – the biomarker barely matters; it’s the trend line that counts.

Making the invisible visible

One finding highlighted by the company is what it describes as the “Hilo Effect” – observational data from more than 30,000 European users suggesting that highly engaged users experienced up to fivefold greater reductions in systolic blood pressure over six months than less engaged users. While observational findings inevitably raise questions about causality, they also point towards a familiar challenge in preventive medicine: sustained engagement.

Stefan Petzinger is the CEO of Hilo

Petzinger told Longevity.Technology that the greatest driver of engagement has proved to be the ability to visualize blood pressure throughout the day.

“The biggest one is the intraday blood pressure pattern,” he explained. “It allows people to actually see how their blood pressure changes throughout the day and how certain actions influence it. Whether it’s going for a walk, getting a better night’s sleep or taking medication, they can see the impact directly.”

Alongside continuous measurements, newer features including sleep tracking, step monitoring and educational content are intended to help users understand what their readings mean rather than simply presenting data. “All of these features keep people engaged and, more importantly, help them make small changes that add up over time,” Petzinger said.

That emphasis on behavioral feedback rather than passive data collection may prove just as important as the sensing technology itself; awareness has long been one of hypertension’s greatest obstacles.

The importance of the night shift

Among Hilo Core’s more distinctive capabilities is overnight blood pressure monitoring. Unlike conventional home cuffs, which are rarely used during sleep, the wearable captures nocturnal measurements that may reveal physiological signatures not apparent during daytime readings.

Dr Marat Fudim is an Associate Professor of Cardiology at Duke University and medical advisor to Hilo

For Dr Marat Fudim, Associate Professor of Cardiology at Duke University and medical advisor to Hilo, those overnight measurements offer clinically meaningful context.

“Blood pressure is a very dynamic and vital component of human physiology,” he told Longevity.Technology. “Night time is the time of the day with the lowest pressure. If the pressure fails to drop at night it tends to be an unhealthy signature for blood pressure and indicates a high stress state, which typically requires further evaluation.”

The phenomenon is known as nocturnal non-dipping, and it carries real weight for cardiovascular risk – which is precisely why overnight measurement matters so much to preventive cardiology. Night-time dipping is just one signal among many, Fudim noted; continuous ambient measurement opens up a far wider window onto how blood pressure actually behaves.

Staying in one lane

The company’s recent $19 million Series B extension has brought total funding to more than $119 million, prompting inevitable questions about future expansion into additional cardiovascular or longevity biomarkers.

Petzinger suggested Hilo has little interest in becoming another general wellness platform.

“One thing we’re absolutely determined to do is make blood pressure care better,” he told Longevity.Technology. “You’ll probably see other blood pressure-related features from us in the future, just like we launched steps and sleep earlier this year. But what you won’t see from us are recovery scores or workout scores. There are already plenty of companies doing that. Our strategy is to build innovation around better blood pressure management and stay laser-focused on solving that problem really well.”

That restraint is rare in a wearable market prone to piling on features long before the evidence catches up. Hilo’s wager is a narrower one: that depth on a single, well-validated risk factor beats breadth across a dozen half-proven ones.

Beyond the reading

As longevity medicine continues its shift from reacting to disease towards anticipating it, technologies that reveal how physiology behaves between clinic visits are likely to become increasingly familiar. Whether continuous blood pressure monitoring ultimately becomes as commonplace as today’s activity tracking will depend on evidence, adoption and meaningful behavior change – but the direction of travel seems increasingly clear: prevention is becoming something we observe continuously rather than measure occasionally.

Photographs courtesy of Hilo