Apple Working With Stanford to Determine If Apple Watch Can Detect Abnormal Heart Rhythms
Apple is planning to work with Stanford and telemedicine vendor American Well to determine whether the heart rate sensor in the Apple Watch can be used to detect abnormal heart rhythms and common heart conditions, reports CNBC.
An Apple Watch, if able to accurately detect arrhythmias, or abnormal heart patterns, could identify patients that are at a high risk of atrial fibrillation or similar conditions. Heart arrhythmias aren't always symptoms of a serious disease, but Apple Watch owners could find out about a problem from the Apple Watch and then get it checked out at a doctor if the device is determined to accurately predict heart problems.
"Atrial fibrillation is a common rhythm disorder and knowing someone has it is medically useful because those people might need specific treatments," said Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
A study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco and the team behind the Cardiogram app previously determined that the Apple Watch was able to detect abnormal heart rhythms with 97 percent accuracy. Apple could get even better results as it has access to raw data.
Just today, Apple CEO Tim Cook talked about Apple's health interests in an interview with Fortune. He said Apple is "extremely interested" in health, and that it represents a major business opportunity.
If you look at it, medical health activity is the largest or second-largest component of the economy, depending on which country in the world you're dealing with. And it hasn't been constructed in a way where the focus at the device level is making great products from a pure point of view. The focus has been on making products that can get reimbursed through the insurance companies, through Medicare, or through Medicaid. And so in some ways we bring a totally fresh view into this and say, 'Forget all of that. What will help people?'
Cook also said that Apple has been surprised to learn how the heart rate monitoring in the Apple Watch has already been helping people. Many people collect data with the Apple Watch, notice something amiss, and then go to the doctor to get it checked out. "A not-insignificant number have found out if they hadn't come into the doctor they would have died," said Cook.
Apple's study in partnership with American Well and Stanford is set to begin later this year, according to CNBC's sources.
Popular Stories
Phishing attacks taking advantage of Apple's password reset feature have become increasingly common, according to a report from KrebsOnSecurity. Multiple Apple users have been targeted in an attack that bombards them with an endless stream of notifications or multi-factor authentication (MFA) messages in an attempt to cause panic so they'll respond favorably to social engineering. An...
At least some Apple software engineers continue to believe that iOS 18 will be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Below, we recap rumored features and changes for the iPhone. "The iOS 18 update is expected to be the most ambitious overhaul of the iPhone's software in its history, according to people working on the upgrade," wrote Gurman, in a r...
Apple will introduce new iPad Pro and iPad Air models in early May, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman previously suggested the new iPads would come out in March, and then April, but the timeline has been pushed back once again. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Apple is working on updates to both the iPad Pro and iPad Air models. The iPad Pro models will...
Apple today announced that its 35th annual Worldwide Developers Conference is set to take place from Monday, June 10 to Friday, June 14. As with WWDC events since 2020, WWDC 2024 will be an online event that is open to all developers at no cost. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. WWDC 2024 will include online sessions and labs so that developers can learn about new...
Apple may be planning to add support for "custom routes" in Apple Maps in iOS 18, according to code reviewed by MacRumors. Apple Maps does not currently offer a way to input self-selected routes, with Maps users limited to Apple's pre-selected options, but that may change in iOS 18. Apple has pushed an iOS 18 file to its maps backend labeled "CustomRouteCreation." While not much is revealed...
Apple on late Tuesday released revised versions of iOS 17.4.1 and iPadOS 17.4.1 with an updated build number of 21E237, according to MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris. The updates previously had a build number of 21E236. The revised updates are available for all iPhone and iPad models that are compatible with iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, but they can only be installed via the Finder app on macOS...
With the App Store and app ecosystem undergoing major changes in the European Union, The Wall Street Journal today shared a profile on App Store chief Phil Schiller, who is responsible for the App Store. Though Schiller transitioned from marketing chief to "Apple Fellow" in 2020 to take a step back from Apple and spend more time on personal projects and friends, he is reportedly working...
Top Rated Comments
Regardless, a pulse measurement may be able to indicate an arythmia. It would probably miss some of the arythmias, but it would rarely give false positive results as the difference from electrical activity to heart rate to pulse is usually a loss of frequency rather than addition. Thus a warning about an uneven or too fast pulse would rarely be false positive. This would possibly help find plenty of undiagnosed atrial fibrillations – especially if data is combined with other predisposing risk factors such as age – and save people from strokes, for example.
They are not the same and can differ markedly.
There is an awful lot you can't diagnose with the pulse rate alone and it would be dangerous to imply that you can, and make medical decisions with the data.
Leave the medical grade monitoring to medical grade equipment thanks....