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Massive Study Finds Apple Watch Can Detect Undiagnosed Heart Rhythm Problems (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Engadget:
Researchers from Stanford University's School of Medicine presented results from a giant study sponsored by Apple Inc. that showed the Apple Watch can sometimes spot patients with undiagnosed heart-rhythm problems, without producing large numbers of false alarms. The Apple-sponsored trial enrolled 419,297 people and was one of the largest heart-screening studies ever.
The study, details of which are being presented today at the American College of Cardiology conference in New Orleans, used the watch's sensors to detect possible atrial fibrillation... People who have atrial fibrillation are at risk of blood clots and strokes. In the U.S., it causes 750,000 hospitalizations a year and contributes to 130,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because it doesn't always produce outward symptoms, it can go undiagnosed. According to results presented Saturday, about 0.5 percent of patients in the study -- or almost 2,100 people -- received notices from their watch indicating that they might have a heart-rhythm problem. That relatively low number showed that the technology wasn't inundating people with worrisome alerts.
People receiving a notification were asked to then wear an ECG (electrocardiography) patch, according to the Verge, adding that Stanford reports "84 percent of the time, participants who received irregular pulse notifications were found to be in atrial fibrillation at the time of the notification."
The dean of Stanford's medical school says the study "opens the door to further research into wearable technologies and how they might be used to prevent disease before it strikes."
The study, details of which are being presented today at the American College of Cardiology conference in New Orleans, used the watch's sensors to detect possible atrial fibrillation... People who have atrial fibrillation are at risk of blood clots and strokes. In the U.S., it causes 750,000 hospitalizations a year and contributes to 130,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because it doesn't always produce outward symptoms, it can go undiagnosed. According to results presented Saturday, about 0.5 percent of patients in the study -- or almost 2,100 people -- received notices from their watch indicating that they might have a heart-rhythm problem. That relatively low number showed that the technology wasn't inundating people with worrisome alerts.
People receiving a notification were asked to then wear an ECG (electrocardiography) patch, according to the Verge, adding that Stanford reports "84 percent of the time, participants who received irregular pulse notifications were found to be in atrial fibrillation at the time of the notification."
The dean of Stanford's medical school says the study "opens the door to further research into wearable technologies and how they might be used to prevent disease before it strikes."
Because it’s not a medical device that is designed and guaranteed to spot that specific set of problems. So is your objection that the study is being accurate in its reporting?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Maybe because it's just a watch and wasn't designed to do this? I think the point of the research is to guide the development of better detection. Things always improve over time, right? From TFA:
“The study is an important first step in figuring out how can we use these technologies in a way that’s evidence based,”
and
“Atrial fibrillation is just the beginning, as this study opens the door to further research into wearable technologies and how they might be used to prevent disease before it strikes”.
As for right now, even getting notification "sometimes" is better than "never".
This sounds like an incredible invasion of privacy. If the device was not designed to do this, and I didn't purchase it to do this, why is it doing this?
Perhaps because these people specifically volunteered for this study? Apple announced it from the stage of a keynote a year or two back and opened it up to the public that same day. Participants had to fill out medical forms and the usual medical waivers before they’d be a part of the study, so this isn’t a case of yet another big company harvesting data from unaware users like you’re trying to paint it.
That’s not what he’s saying. The Apple Watch has a heartbeat monitor. As a non-medical device, it probably can measure heartbeats within reasonable accuracy for consumers. When judged to medical device standards, it might not be as good. What the study says is that if you allow it to record data over a long period of time, it might be able to spot certain health problems. But don’t use its data alone before scheduling surgeries. The function is there only to alert to possible problems that more extensive medical tests can verify.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Key phrases in the article. Looks more like damning with faint praise. Why only "sometimes"? For something that is worn as much as an Apple Watch, it should "nearly always" be able to spot a problem.
You REALLY don’t like Apple, do you? Because you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel to try and come up with anything against this.
Being able to cheaply (by medical standards) and passively detect a previously undiagnosed, major medical issue in 0.5% of participants with a false positive rate of 16% or less using a device that people are actually interested in regularly wearing (i.e. unlike most medical devices) is simply incredible. Doctors have no idea how prevalent some of these ailments actually are, since they tend not to see them until major symptoms start to present themselves or the person is already in a hospital setting for some other condition. If they’re able to start getting good data about how often and to whom these things happen in the population and how the symptoms develop across a wide number of people, they can start to understand the risk factors and develop better treatment plans.
This is a good thing, but you’re right, it should be better.
Thankfully, it already is. This study was started quite awhile ago, so it only included Series 3 and earlier Apple Watches. Notably, it didn’t include the Series 4 watches that came out later with significantly better sensors and the ability to conduct ECGs on the spot, so things are already much better, just like you wanted.