How Apple Watch is used for heart health: New research
Apple Watch offers multiple features scaling between a regular watch to a walkie-talkie, but the latest news announced by the company states that Apple Watch is used for heart health research.
Apple Watch is the company's wearable smartwatch that can also be used for heart health tracking, and it is known that the smartwatch can detect health issues. Professors worldwide are working on implying the smartwatch to their ongoing studies and elevating their results with accurate and specific results.
Researchers have been investigating how Apple Watch is used for heart health, thanks to a program run by Apple worldwide. Authorized doctors have been working on the project in different areas of the world. According to the announcement by Apple, it is spotlighting the cutting-edge work of health researchers around the world who are using Apple Watch to study the heart like never before.
Senior pediatric oncologists from Melbourne, Australia, Associate professor Rachel Conyers and Dr. Claudia Toro, will begin researching the sensitivity of the Apple Watch ECG app in 40 children and adolescent patients in the coming months with their team. They work within the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, caring for children in a tertiary pediatric oncologic clinic and researching toxicities related to cancer therapies.
“I read about the Apple Heart Study and I thought this could be important for pediatrics. 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,” said Dr. Conyers.
The research continues worldwide as associate professor Dr. So-Min Cheong of Texas A&M University will partner with Marco Perez and Drs. Brian Kim from Stanford Medicine. They will be equipping firefighters with Apple Watch to study the impact of wildfire smoke on heart health. After the devastating wildfires in California a couple of years ago, Dr. Cheong wanted to "study the personal impact of wildfire smoke on cardiac health in firefighters." Up to 200 firefighters in Texas and California will join the studies, and Apple Watch will monitor their heart rates and rhythm. Moreover, the participating firefighters will also "wear an air quality monitor and complete surveys related to sleep, activity, and wildfire smoke-related symptoms."
Dr. Sebastiaan Blok of the Amsterdam University Medical Centers will be joining the program from Europe. The doctor has already been conducting research about detecting AFib (atrial fibrillation), and he developed a randomized controlled study as part of a larger initiative called HartWacht alongside his team. They are looking to focus on patients over the age of 65, and more than 300 patients are expected to join the research, and they are required to wear Apple Watch 12 hours a day. They will take an ECG once every three weeks or if they feel any symptoms.
AdvertisementIn the Netherlands, “There are about 300,000 people who have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. But there’s also an estimated 100,000 people who have it but don’t know, likely because they haven’t experienced symptoms.” said Dr. Nicole van Steijn, an investigator on the research team.