A healthy adult’s heart beats more than 100,000 times in a single day, according to health studies. Day by day, beat by beat, a picture starts to emerge that is mostly unseen.
The good news is that Apple Watch now offers a solution that can assist in making the invisible visible. Apple gives users an ever-evolving view of their health with actionable insights through their most recent heart health features, such as high and low heart notifications, Cardio Fitness, irregular rhythm notifications, the ECG app, and AFib History.
The same modern technology that enables users to gain a deeper comprehension of their own health has the potential to lead to new discoveries for the medical and research communities. Researchers, clinicians, and developers have devised novel new approaches to the study, tracking, and treatment of a wide range of conditions since Apple launched ResearchKit and CareKit in 2015.
Apple launched the Investigator Support Program to accelerate health-enhancing discoveries on a larger scale. Apple grants researchers access to Apple Watch devices through this program, allowing them to forge new ground in health research, including the scientific understanding of the heart.
Apple is highlighting the state of the art work of health scientists all over the planet who are using Apple Watch to concentrate on the heart.
Using the electrical heart sensor, the ECG app can record the heartbeat and rhythm on Apple Watch Series 4 and others. The Health app’s ECG waveform can be shared as a PDF.
An app developed by WeGuide in collaboration with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute allows researchers to securely share Apple Watch ECGs.
Pediatricians believe that this may be significant for them.
“We used to think of cardiac toxicity as something that happened 10 years after treatment. But now we know that new cancer therapies (like specific inhibitors or immune therapy) can cause arrhythmias within 48 hours of medication — so there’s a big gap in terms of what we know about the toxicities at the moment.”
In the meantime, the Apple Watch-enabled data types of heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen, activity, and other data from study participants will be examined by Stanford Medicine and Texas A&M researchers.
According to feedback from Apple Watch users, the device is well-known for its accuracy in measuring heart rate. For the purpose of investigating the effects of wildfire smoke on heart health, the researchers will begin equipping firefighters with Apple Watches.
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The study intends to monitor sleep, oxygen levels in the blood, activity data, and more using Apple Watch. Additionally, firefighters will complete surveys regarding sleep, activity, and symptoms related to wildfire smoke and wear an air quality monitor.
In a randomized control study, researchers at the Cardiology Centers of the Netherlands are looking into ways to use Apple Watch features like irregular rhythm notifications to detect AFib earlier.
Experts in epidemiology in Europe estimate that the rate of atrial fibrillation (AFib) will double in the European Union by 2060. A common heart arrhythmia known as AFib can have serious consequences if left untreated, including an increased risk of heart failure or stroke.
Some doctors agree, saying,
“Apple Watch is such a widely used, reliable consumer wearable that we thought it would be a great device for us to integrate into our research to better understand how we could potentially integrate it into the larger health system”
