There’s no question that artificial intelligence will revolutionize our lives, including healthcare. This week, Apple made headlines concerning two types of monitoring with the Apple Watch and today I’ll be touching on one of them.
Cardiogram — a heart rate monitoring app used with the Apple Watch can detect AFib with 97% accuracy. With at least 2.7 million Americans living with AFib, this screening tool can prove to be incredibly important. While Cardiogram acknowledged there is more work to be done, they continue to work towards a much bigger goal.
Our work is far from complete. We do not just want to detect disease, we want to treat it. In the future, you could imagine Cardiogram sends you a notification: “We noticed an abnormality in your heartbeat. Want to chat with a cardiologist?” After connecting you with a doctor, we will monitor the effectiveness of your treatment plan. “Looks like your beta blocker medication is working, but loses effectiveness after 12 hours. Why don’t you increase your dosage?” Using wearables, we can not only detect disease early, but can also guide patients down the road to recovery.
Out of curiosity, I downloaded the app and synced my health information. I log more steps than 70% of users, but my resting heart rate is lower than only 31%. The app notified me on Wednesday, my heart rate peaked at 104 bpm between 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. There is space to record your activity during that time. My activity? Stress! If you have an Apple Watch or Android Wear, I’d love to hear your feedback and results. It’s been less than a week and I can already see so many reasons to keep Cardiogram. With updates and future technology, I see this app becoming a permanent fixture on my watch face.
Singh, Avesh. “Applying Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Our Early Results” Cardiogram, https://blog.cardiogr.am/applying-artificial-intelligence-in-medicine-our-early-results-78bfe7605d32. 11 May 2017.
Leave a Reply