“I predict the Apple Watch will be a highly successful product,” Steve Brozak reports for Forbes. “Apple Watch is not so much an instrument for telling time as it is a personal interactive device that is attached to your body. One of the critical Apple Watch differentiators is its capacity to become the first commercial data-gathering and synthesis system for personal health metrics. By default, Apple Watch capabilities will automatically lead to healthcare monitoring modalities that, until now, have only been the stuff of science fiction.”
“Apple Watch could deliver event or monitor-driven, ultra-personalized medical data to you, your doctor, to another system that evaluates and adjusts treatment to meet changing circumstances, or to emergency contacts if you are incapacitated,” Brozak reports. “The responsibility for reporting new or changed medical conditions will shift from the patient to an automatic reporting system, assuring more frequent and more accurate data. The result will be better and less costly healthcare.”
“Cost is a major factor in healthcare. The cost of healthcare in the U.S. today is $2.8 trillion a year and growing. Economic experts have predicted that unless healthcare costs can be brought under control, they will be unsustainable,” Brozak reports. “Monitoring lifestyle choices and people with healthcare risks could help hold down the growth of healthcare costs.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Watch is a truly revolutionary product whose benefits will grow exponentially.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “First 2014, Then 2016” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Jeb Bush promotes Apple Watch as a tool that could help replace Obamacare – May 15, 2015
Heart health app seeing big usage on Apple Watch – May 14, 2015
How the Apple Watch is changing my health for the better – May 11, 2015
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center connects Apple’s HealthKit to 80,000 patients – April 27, 2015
Apple Watch be as indispensable as a stethoscope? How Apple will impact healthcare – April 15, 2015
Why Apple’s ResearchKit signals a golden age for health care – March 28, 2015
How the Apple Watch will help you take charge of your health – February 23, 2015
More than half of top U.S. hospitals are trialling Apple HealthKit – February 5, 2015
Apple’s HealthKit seeing early adoptions by large healthcare institutions – December 5, 2014
No doctor or other provider of healthcare (PA, APN) is going to base diagnosis or treatment upon a device that is not FDA approved or capable of reference calibration. To do so would be to open a Pandora’s Box of liability, possible revocation of license and violation of civil law.
Ask any Lawyer or Healthcare Professional. Better yet, ask Apple.
Apple Watch EULA:
“(h) Apple Watch, the heart rate sensor and its data and included Apple Watch apps are not medical devices and are intended for fitness purposes only. They are not designed or intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.”
Click to access AppleWatch.pdf
I seriously doubt Apple will take on the expense of certifying the Apple Watch as an FDA approved Medical Device. Without that it is a no go.
Surely it and devices like it will be able to be aids at least. If it detected irregularities of some sort with a heart beat it can be a prompt to seek medical help. If this then results in an earlier diagnosis it could save lives, and reduce costs. To me it just seems like it could be a useful tool. To think it would replace actual healthcare seems premature though.
With condition and disclaimer that Apple bears no liability, Apple Watch definitely can perform as medical device simply by the fact it is the most accurate device besides ECG equipment, and just as accurate as the best on-body bands.
However, as accurate Apple Watch is in terms of measuring heartbeat, you have to bear in mind that Apple Watch will not provide detailed ECG picture of what happens with your heart. There are cases when the pulse itself can be still pretty normal, but the ECG line would expose dangerous signs.
So if you have any kind of heart-related medical condition, buying on-body strap-band that records ECG and connected to your iPhone further to warn your doctor or even 911, it will be much better.
Of course, for people who have no heart conditions, Apple Watch might enough.
How would you know that you do not have a serious heart condition if all you have is an Apple Watch?
Many conditions can cause permanent or temporary arrhythmias that may or may not be medically significant and the watch is incapable of making that determination in a reliable way.
I have no doubt that Apple could make such a device, but it will not be $400.
“How would you know that you do not have a serious heart condition if all you have is an Apple Watch?”
____________________
You might be tipped off if you fall to the ground clutching at the sharp pain in your chest.
Apple Watch can definitely detect arrhythmias, and raw data for that will be accessible for HealthKit applications in the future.
In regular mode, however, it is not that easy, and Apple Watch measures pulse for 1 minute every 10 minutes. User can have arrhythmia within that 1 minute, but maybe it will happen in other 9 minutes when pulse is not measured.
Apple Watch provide continuous pulse measurement in tracking/fitness mode, but current level of battery life only allows 6-7 hours of such continuous measurement.
This is why I wrote that if user already have established issues with heart, it is better to buy on-body ECG strap with big battery, continuous ECG measurement, Bluetooth connection to HealthKit application that would immediately notify user’s doctor or even 911.
However, if you do not have established issues yet, Apple Watch can be enough to detect most apparent issues such as tachycardia or arrhythmia, and this alone can save countless lives as sometimes people (especially men) just do not detect such things.
Sorry for accidentally downvoting your post, this was meant for DavGreg
Wrong ! For information on prior symptoms, the doctor currently can only rely on the patient reporting what s/he thinks has been happening (this report is often colored by the -less scientifically informed- model the patient maintains about the underlying reasons).
Believing the information from measurements of an “non-FDA-approved” instrument remains at the discretion of the medical professional.
“Monitoring lifestyle choices and people with healthcare risks could help hold down the growth of healthcare costs.”
That is true as a general statement. However, the single biggest factor which has a negative impact on the health of Americans is the diet they eat which is high in salt, sugar, and fat. I’m not sure how an Apple Watch or any other device currently available could monitor those parameters. Furthermore, the real challenge will be to get people to change their eating habits and select a diet higher in vegetables and fruits, with minimal to no meat, dairy, or processed edible food-like substances (aka junk food).
I would impose huge taxes on all kinds of Colas and MacDonald’s and/or other limitations, as well as giant public service campaigns against it.
Drinking/eating that is about as harmful as smoking.
The very fact that this all is still allowed is outrageous.
Cola and other sugared drinks are kept at artificially low prices due to the US government subsidy of farmers growing corn. Take away the subsidy and the price of sugar (corn syrup) and soda will rise to much higher levels and everyone will be better for it.
Law of unintended consequences?
You bee-in-the-bonnet liberals just can’t stop inserting yourselves into people’s lives. A bunch of self-appointed micromanagers who make me want to puke. Everything liberals touch turns to feces, and you never take ownership of your 100% failure rate.
Please, please, please, I implore you:
Just leave us the hell alone!
You bug up your …Wingers always have to inject your ideology into every topic, even though it doesn’t fit. Taxing sugar might be a way of returning all that tax money Tranz4m is talking about to the people. Getting the Repubs to cut out the farm subsidies to giant mega agriculture ain’t going to happen.
Since you are dumb, I will teach you: You are the one that injected ideology into this. I was RESPONDING to YOUR ideology! Hello? Anyone home?
So the government screws up by subsidizing corn resulting in cheap sugar and making everyone fat and your idea to fix it is to pass more legislation to tax corn syrup to make everyone skinny. Brilliant! 😉 Not. How about remove the subsidy (slowly) and let the market fix itself and the price of sugar. No more free refills.
I reject your premise that salt and fat are bad for you. Doctors and nutritionists are finally recognizing that eating fat does not make you fat. And studies are showing that salt, too, has been unscientifically demonized.
Sugar, on the other hand, is pretty evil.
The fat you eat is the fat you wear.
http://www.lanimuelrath.com/blog/is-the-fat-you-eat-the-fat-youll-wear/
Sodium is essential to good health. You have to have it for normal nerve conduction and cellular functioning. However, you’ll have a hard time finding any evidence that a large salt intake is good for you. Too little salt can be a problem, but it’s pretty difficult to get a true sodium deficiency if you are consuming an adequate amount of food from natural sources. The problem in the USA isn’t that we consume too little salt. It’s that salt, sugar, and fat are added to so many foods in order to influence how much of them we consume (and by extension, how much of those products we buy).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/books/salt-sugar-fat-by-michael-moss.html?_r=0
Sorry, that is wrong. One study does not facts make. Fat is made as part of the KREBS cycle. . . from an over indulgence of carbohydrates. Dietary fat does not turn into body fat. Some building blocks used may be extracted from dietary fat, but fat itself is constructed in the KREBS cycle from the excess carbohydrates. For the most part, dietary fats pass through the body as the body preferentially burns carbs before fat. I speak as a person who has gotten rid of 150 pounds of excess weight with a girlfriend who has disposed of 243 pounds of excess weight and both of us have not found that weight we have disposed of for years. We KNOW how to get rid of it and know how to keep it off and we eat real butter and real cream and real fats. . . but avoid carbohydrates. My girlfriend is writing a low carb cookbook with desserts that taste and feel on the tongue exactly as good as the carb and calorie laden desserts you get at restaurants. She has a cheese cake as good as you can get at the Cheese Cake Factory. . . with one seventh the calories and only 10 carbs.
Correct. This months American Diabetes Association Magazine stated that the 1970’s and 1983 British and US government edicts that Saturated fat was bad for you was not based on any scientific study. A review of 5 recent studies found that eating less saturated fat made no difference in lifespan and that reducing Cholesterol also made no difference. What they did find was that eating less fat of all types (under 30% of calories) resulted in loosing body weight which did make you live longer.
The probability of the Apple Watch having any effect on health care cost in the US (or anywhere else) is 1/Avogadro’s number.
Wish I had one though
I think the Apple watch will be beneficial to health monitoring except for one major issue. No data will be collected whenever you are charging it.
I hope that the Apple Watch improves health technology and healthcare, and I think that it will, but I doubt there is any force on earth that can save what should be a private healthcare system that’s been illegally taken over by government busybodies.
You know what has also driven down health care costs? Obamacare.
Obamacare has, in fact, driven up insurance costs, and since you are economically retarded I am happy to inform you that the dynamics inserted by socialized healthcare drive prices up while lowering the quality and availability of health care.
The world sucks because of people like you.
Nothing is going to bring down healthcare costs in the U.S. because far too much of the economy is involved: employment, research or graft. No one wants to see that gravy train slow except the consumers, and no one has their interests in mind. After all, we are dealing with life and death, and consumers will pay everything they have to survive!
Well, if Apple Watch can take pulse and blood pressure, I like it. Otherwise, I was just at 59 year old’s funeral yesterday… ye time is coming, boys…
We Orenokoto, no one gets out of this life alive. The game is to take as long as possible before that happens and do it in the best shape possible before death catches up to you.