Apple Watch + AI can detect fatal heart condition

November 18, 2022

Years ago, I met Jony Ive in a hotel bar for a drink.

It was just a couple of months after the Apple Watch was first announced. The device had not yet been released, but there was a lot of skepticism from the public and press about whether Apple's smartwatch would become a success.

I asked him if he was confident it would take off.

Without any hesitation, Ive said he was convinced it would be a big hit.

Sales will start slowly, he said, but eventually, everybody will wear one -- "because it could save your life."

At the time, the first Apple Watch offered fairly rudimentary health and wellness features, but Ive was absolutely right. Fast forward eight years, and the Apple Watch can now detect ventricular dysfunction -- a weak heart pump -- using specially trained AI.

Before this, detecting a weak heart pump required time-consuming and expensive clinical tests like an echocardiogram, CT scan or MRI.

But researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that a weak heart pump can be detected from an ECG uploaded from the wearer's Apple Watch. It could "revolutionize health care," said one of the co-authors of the study.

It's just of the many health-related features and benefits of the Apple Watch.

We've got a ways to go before everyone wears an Apple Watch, but I suspect Jony Ive's prediction eventually will prove right.

-- Leander Kahney, EIC.

The famed Mayo Clinic showed us a new way artificial intelligence and Apple Watch can help save patients’ lives, according to a new study. Instead of relying only on expensive tests conducted in clinical settings, doctors may be able to turn to AI and Apple Watch electrocardiogram recordings to help determine which patients have previously undetected heart pump problems that could lead to heart failure.

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"We humans are tool builders. We can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitude." -- Steve Jobs, 1990.

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