Slashdot Mirror
Apple Watch Can Detect An Abnormal Heart Rhythm With 97 Percent Accuracy, UCSF Study Says (techcrunch.com)
According to a study conducted through heartbeat measurement app Cardiogram and the University of California, San Francisco, the Apple Watch is 97 percent accurate in detecting the most common abnormal heart rhythm when paired with an AI-based algorithm. TechCrunch reports: The study involved 6,158 participants recruited through the Cardiogram app on Apple Watch. Most of the participants in the UCSF Health eHeart study had normal EKG readings. However, 200 of them had been diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heartbeat). Engineers then trained a deep neural network to identify these abnormal heart rhythms from Apple Watch heart rate data. Cardiogram began the study with UCSF in 2016 to discover whether the Apple Watch could detect an oncoming stroke. About a quarter of strokes are caused by an abnormal heart rhythm, according to Cardiogram co-founder and data scientist for UCSF's eHeart study Brandon Ballinger. Cardiogram tested the deep neural network it had built against 51 in-hospital cardioversions (a procedure that restores the heart's normal rhythm) and says it achieved a 97 percent accuracy in the neural network's ability to find irregular heart activity. Additional information available via a Cardiogram blog post.
Is there a scientific basis for your opinion or do you make up your opinions based on what your can fish out of your ass crack?
Read any tutorial on Bayes theorem. Chances are most of the positive results will be false positives, but neither patients/consumers nor their doctors understand that, they hear "97 percent accuracy" and "You tested positive".
Well, if the alternatives are wearing nothing at all or a $50k medical device your insurance won't cover...
Also, the Apple Watch was useful as a development platform; HealthKit makes it easier to run informal trials and collect medical data from a large number of users. The software they've developed with that data could likely now be ported to other devices.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
As usual, some very important data is missing. For example, how many false positives? How many missed negatives that a $50k machine would find? What's the cost of the finds and misses? Time frames? etc.
Going to bite:
You are right that the Apple Watch should not be held to the same standard, but if having it increases the survival rate by at least 10%, then it may be a nice bonus feature. The alternative is either a more expense device few people buy or having no indicator at all.
It would be good to have this study done on other watches.
At no point should such a device be mistaken for a specialised medical device.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Cardiogram is also available on Android devices. Is TFA paid for by Cardiogram or Apple?
> About a quarter of strokes are caused by an abnormal heart rhythm
But what about the opposite? How frequently does an abnormal heart rhythm result in a stroke? TFA doesn't mention it.
If this is a low proportion, then there will be many false positives, making detection of abnormal heart rhythm useless in terms of stroke prediction. It will only serve in increase anxiety of users.
Atrial fibrillation is characterized by being 'irregularly irregular'. It is really pretty easy to identify, at least for humans and even EKG machines. The mathematical algorithms are well known and well characterized. The major difficulty that the iWatch has is that it is only using one EKG lead.
But even three lead monitors have no problems with that.
But yes, it has some useful medical implications. "Paroxysmal" atrial fibrillation is when the underlying rhythm is normal but occasionally jumps into afib. That is medically important since the heart doesn't pump normally and the patient can feel weak and tired and it increases the likelihood of a blood clot. The rate of strokes (due to blood clots) from paroxysmal afib is no where near 15% but it is a large number because it's a common abnormality. Having your watch warn you of that is potentially useful.
Of course, I'm going to tell you to take one aspirin and call me in the morning.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Fair enough. Thing is, I just spent 2 weeks in hospital due to exactly this. Paroxysmal Fibrillation. If the watch can give me warning of impending problems before they happen I could avoid that. I know what medical equipment looks like, I just spent 2 weeks attached to it. An Apple watch would be a perfect device to keep an eye on things in the next few years instead of carrying a bloody EKG with me all the time.
Sure it is not perfect. But since I am not going to actually wear real medical equipment for a few years it is waaaaay better than nothing. You only notice arrythmia when the ticker is already going bonkers and damage has been done. If I pick pick up early signs as a tripwire the watch will have dont its job just nicely, thank you. Risk reduction, not elimination is the key here.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Except for me, who just spent time in hospital due to precisely this. If the chances are low for you it does not mean it is low for everyone. I would be happy to wear the device as a tripwire trigger. The fitbit I have did not cut the bacon, it did not pick up the problem.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Where do I buy it? Does it fit on my wrist?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Except there's no evidence that it improves survival rate at all.
That wasn't the goal of this study. The point was to find out if it could detect the condition.
97% accuracy is easy to achieve when the chances of this condition are so incredibly low. It's also not impressive when you consider there are devices that get much closer to 100% with almost no error. What do you want, the thing that maybe works, or the thing that virtually always works?
Yes, but they are expensive, Rx only in most cases, and somewhat inconvenient for people to wear all day every day. Having something that people already own that is capable of having close to the accuracy of those devices is valuable. No doctor will use it as a diagnostic, that's not the point. The point is to make the person wearing it aware that something might be wrong and that they should see a doctor to have it properly diagnosed.
Also, I think you are under-estimating the prevalence arrhythmias. They are not what I would consider to be "incredibly low". According to the CDC the prevalence of atrial fibrillation is about 2% of people under 65, and 9% over 65.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.