Apple Watch creates false positives, which can lead to up to 90% of people receiving warnings that they have heart disease

A new study shows that heart rate monitoring on the Apple Watch can unnecessarily cause many people to be hospitalized unnecessarily to check on their health. Surveys at the Mayo Clinic show that only about 10% of people who see a doctor after noticing an irregular heartbeat on their watch are diagnosed with heart disease.

This research was led by an associate professor of emergency medicine at the Mayo Clinic Medical College, Heather Heaton. He found that home health monitoring devices could be costly to the patient and the clinical system, wasting the time of doctors and patients unnecessarily.

Heaton and team survey the health records of patients at every Mayo Clinic location, including offices in Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida and Iowa, between December 2018 and April. year 2019.

They found records of 264 patients saying their Apple Watch issued heart rate warnings. Half of them have ever been diagnosed with heart disease. About two-thirds of patients have symptoms including dizziness or chest pain.

But after the doctor’s examination, only 30 of them were diagnosed with heart disease. This study concludes that most heart rate monitoring data may be false positives. Even though false positives keep patients healthy, it does cause other problems: they can keep patients going when they’re not needed and can cause stress and anxiety.

This is becoming a trend. For many years, doctors have noticed, many patients have come to their offices for medical examinations after studying medical symptoms themselves on the internet. And smartwatches only exacerbate this.

Not only Apple Watch, many other wearables also feature heart rate diagnostics, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3 with EKG feature, or Fitbit’s Sense watch. Even though only a small percentage of users receive an irregular heartbeat notification on these devices (a study with the Apple Watch found that only about 1% of users receive an alert), with millions who have used them – there may be thousands who will needlessly go to a doctor.

Why is this happening?

These products ” blurs the lines between rigorously studied medical devices and healthcare tools, ” said Kirk Wyatt, co-author of the study. People don’t understand how they work and how they should be used.

For example, people with a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation were not caused by a feature on the Apple Watch, but more than 20% of people in the study were diagnosed as such. This feature is also not being used by people under the age of 22, but nearly 20 people in the study’s profile were below this age.

In fact, most research on the effectiveness of the Apple Watch focuses solely on whether they can detect atrial fibrillation, but does not report its effectiveness as a screening tool in the system. health care system. Without that information, doctors like Heaton were concerned that the devices could cause confusion and unnecessary stress to patients about their health.

Refer to The Verge