Apple has a tendency to pitch its products and services as either industry-changing or even life-changing. That may well be true given how the iPhone helped revolutionize the way we use the internet. While Apple has had misses—such as the recently scrapped charging mat AirPower—it has no shortage of triumphs.
The Apple Watch falls squarely into that category. The U.S. tech giant has been promoting Apple Watch as a health-monitoring wearable for the past couple of years, and the Watch’s ability to detect irregular heart rates has made it a potentially lifesaving device.
Hong Kong resident Gaston D’Aquino, 77, can attest to that. About a year ago, D’Aquino was at church when his Watch buzzed, alerting him to an unusually high heartbeat. Though he felt fine, he went to the hospital anyway, where doctors immediately hooked him up to an electrocardiogram, or ECG, which confirmed the irregularity. Further tests revealed that D’Aquino’s coronary arteries were more than 90% blocked. He underwent an angioplasty and has since fully recovered.
According to Apple representatives, stories like D’Aquino’s inspired the company to further refine the Watch’s heart-tracking capabilities. Last month, Hong Kong became the first city in Asia to get the Watch equipped with a new ECG app that captures the heart’s rhythm. The ECG results can then be exported as PDF files and shared by email or messaging apps to the user’s physician.
The ECG sensor works by monitoring the heart’s electrical activity. A 30-second scan can detect signs of atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm that’s associated with higher risk of heart failure and stroke. Clinical tests conducted by Apple and Stanford’s School of Medicine with 600 volunteers, half of whom suffered from atrial fibrillation, successfully identified 236 of 240 affected by the condition (the other 60 either withdrew from the study or failed to conduct scans regularly).
Fitness trackers that can detect heartbeats aren’t new and there are already portable ECG devices by other brands on the market. But the Apple Watch is the first to win medical validation. In addition to the seal of approval from Stanford’s medical school, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and Europe’s Conformité Européenne have both certified the ECG watch as meeting safety requirements.
While Hong Kong has no similar regulatory body, cardiologist Jeffrey W. H. Fung of Hong Kong’s Adventist Hospital says he sees benefits to such a device. “Symptoms for those who suffer from irregular arrhythmia (irregular heart rhythm) often come and go suddenly,” says Dr. Fung. “I think the watch being always with them helps them keep track of it and provide more data. More data is always good.”
