The Apple Watch is widely being used as a daily health and fitness assistant, making its owner’s life’s safer and healthier in many ways. In our recently conducted Twitter poll, a majority answered that their favorite Apple Watch apps are health and fitness related, take a look at the distribution below:
What are your favorite Apple Watch apps?
— WatchAppList.com 🇺🇸 (@watchapplist) November 28, 2017
What this means is that great health apps, will get noticed by the Apple Watch community.
Yesterday, the mobile health accessory focused company AliveCor, got the FDA approval for its new KardiaBand ($199 Amazon). The company states: “The first of its kind, FDA-cleared, clinical grade wearable EKG replaces your original Apple Watch® band providing access to a 30-second EKG anytime, anywhere.”
KardiaBand replaces your existing Apple Watch band, and enables you to quickly take an EKG, which then transfers to the iPhone app. While the app is measuring your heart rate, users have also the option to speak into their Apple Watch’s microphone. This can help the app to detect shortness of breath and other symptoms. All collected data can then be shared with your doctor, who can then provide better recommendations based on a more comprehensive health picture. The app also integrates with Apple Health, meaning that all data can be logged there as well along your workouts.
ECG’s are important: “By looking at an ECG, a doctor can discern a wealth of information about the health and activity of your heart muscle, much more than you can tell from your heart rate alone. ECGs are the required gold standard for diagnosis of arrhythmias and many cardiac abnormalities, and can even be used to see evidence of acute heart attacks and even events that have occurred in the past.”
In terms of functionality, AliveCor also developed neural network based heart monitoring called SmartRhythm:
“SmartRhythm monitoring then compares the characteristics of the heart rate it predicted for you, with your actual heart rate values recorded during those 5 minutes. If your heart rate pattern differs significantly (much higher, lower, and/or differing variance) from what the network expects it to be, it notifies you to take an ECG.
All of this works without ever explicitly teaching the neural network what is “normal” and what isn’t. In fact, we trained this neural network simply by providing a large number of healthy volunteers with Apple Watches that recorded their heart rate and activity patterns while performing regular daily activities, including exercise and sleep.”
Watch the video below to see KardiaBand in action:
The band can be purchased for $199 on Amazon, and requirers a $99 / year subscription, to make use of its app.