Читать книгу The Future of Health - Roberto Ascione - Страница 10

Apple Watch was certainly not the first instrument on the market among the wearables. However, it has been one of the cornerstones in the health-care revolution. Through not only its built-in functions, but also scenarios it makes possible, it has proposed itself as a common interface to numerous health apps that can communicate with it. This is why the Apple Watch has turned out to be a very important instrument for increasing a patient's adherence to their health-care program. In fact, specific apps can send alerts to remind a person to take a particular medicine, or they can use the Apple Watch's sensor network to make predictions about certain pathologies and recommend specific health checks.

Since 2019, Apple Watch users can take part in the three medical studies launched by the health-care giant in collaboration with leading academic and research institutes, to monitor women's health, investigate the correlation between heart rate and mobility signals, and assess the impact that the daily exposure to sound has on hearing.

In the same year, the ECG function was made available to all the users of the Apple Watch Series 4. The ECG app makes it possible to record the user's heart rate and rhythm using an electric heart sensor, and then to check the recording for the presence of atrial fibrillation (AF). The ability of the app to accurately classify an ECG recording as AF was tested in a clinical trial involving about 600 subjects. The app had a 98.3 percent sensitivity in the classification of atrial fibrillation, and a 99.6 percent specificity in the classification of the normal sinus rhythm.

An important step in Apple's push to market its Apple Watch as a health and fitness device is represented by the agreements it has struck with insurance companies such as Aetna, United Healthcare, and Devoted Health, which are subsidizing the cost of the device for their policyholders.

Apple is joining forces with researchers to conduct three health studies that include using Apple Watch to explore how blood oxygen levels can be used in future health applications. This year, Apple will collaborate with the University of California, Irvine, and Anthem to examine how longitudinal measurements of blood oxygen and other physiological signals can help manage and control asthma.

Separately, Apple will work closely with investigators at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at the University Health Network, one of the largest health research organizations in North America, to better understand how blood oxygen measurements and other Apple Watch metrics can help with the management of heart failure. Finally, investigators with the Seattle Flu Study at the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine and faculty from the University of Washington School of Medicine will seek to learn how Apple Watch can detect signals related to heart rate and blood oxygen, which could serve as early signs of respiratory conditions like influenza and Covid-19.¹