Notes from Digital Apothecary on Apple Watch Series 4.

The recent Apple event was pretty tame compared to past years, with three new iPhones and Watch announced. Overall, a lot of this news had been floating around for the past few days before the event, but one item that caught my attention was the integration of an EKG sensor into the Series 4 Apple Watch.

Indeed, the event did highlight a bunch of new health features of the Apple Watch, including a bigger size and such, but two health items caught my attention:

ECG - A 30s ECG is being added after FDA approval to the Apple Watch that can detect arrhythmia’s (more specifically A. Fib). This is perhaps the biggest item being discussed in the Apple/Digital health field at the time, which I’ll go into detail further along.

Fall Risk - If you fall, the Apple Watch will allow you call for medical aid, and if no response is logged after 60 seconds. Now, I love this to a certain point. I think it’s going to be a good feature for those that want to enable it - and could be something recommended for patients at a high fall risk. It is a timely feature, given the recent acquisition of GreatCall by BestBuy lately, so Apple is definitely paying attention to how to leverage its device for services.

Expanded App Design - Some of the images released of how the Apple Watch can display data integrated with mobile apps for health-related purposes were really cool I thought, such as Dexcom CGM and Clue period tracker. Really nice interfaces that I think can help remind users to engage in their use, which often seems forgotten and leads to drop off for most of these health apps.

https://www.thedigitalapothecary.com/pharmacy-innovation-news/2018/9/13/lets-talk-about-the-new-apple-watch-and-what-it-means-for-health 

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