We’ve grown to love Apple’s smartwatch. It’s not just a great fitness tracker, it’s that rarest of things: a piece of tech that can actually change your life. The multitude of sensors on-board means the wristwatch can track your heart rhythm and it logs the data on your phone. If it spots any irregularities, it’ll suggest you take a trip to the doctor, who can take a look at ECGs recorded by the watch.
The Apple Watch will also keep an eye out if you fall or your pulse stops and alert emergency services if something’s awry. There are other variables it’ll track like your sleep, blood oxygen saturation and even heart rate variability, which scientists think could be a good indicator of your overall wellbeing.
The future’s bright for the Apple Watch too. A study involving 400,000 participants by researchers at Stanford University found that a smartwatch and phone could be effectively used together to spot atrial fibrillation in wearers, one of the most common heart issues in the UK, though it’s important to note that this feature hasn’t been implemented yet.
Similarly, Apple watches are being trialled as a means of remotely tracking the condition of patients with chronic conditions like asthma and heart disease and it’s even being deployed by the University of Washington’s School of Medicine to find out if it can predict the onset of flu or COVID-19 before a patient is aware of symptoms.
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