Apple Watch 97% Accurate In Diagnosing Irregular Heartbeat, Study Says

Apple Watch might be more than a fancy accessory for your wrist. The device could be of great help to heart patients, according to a'Health e-heart' study conducted by University of California, San Francisco, which finds that the device is 97 percent accurate in diagnosing irregular heartbeat. "Our results show that common wearable trackers like smartwatches present a novel opportunity to monitor, capture and prompt medical therapy for atrial fibrillation without any active effort from patients. While mobile technology screening won't replace more conventional monitoring methods, it has the potential to successfully screen those at an increased risk and lower the number of undiagnosed cases of AF," the report's senior author, Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS Endowed Professor of Atrial Fibrillation Research and Director of Clinical Research for the Division of Cardiology at UCSF, said in the findings published Wednesday. The research trained a deep neural network (DNN) and paired it with the Apple Watch and Cardiogram app.