03. Apple Heart Study

The Apple Heart Study

Apple Heart Study Overview

If wearables are ever to be used in a medical context, research and clinical trials need to be done with wearable devices. We’re going to look into one such study, the Apple Heart Study (AHS). Apple, with Stanford University, recruited 419,000 individuals over 8 months to participate over the internet. Participants just had to download an app over the App Store, provided they already owned an Apple Watch and an iPhone. The goal of the study was to try to detect an abnormal heart rhythm called Atrial Fibrillation (AF). AF is one of the most common arrhythmias affecting up to 6 million people in the US and it’s significant because it’s associated with a 4 - 5x increase in the risk of stroke.

Study Procedure

The way the AHS worked was the watch would sometimes notify participants of an irregular pulse rhythm. Once notified, the researchers would send these participants a wearable ECG chest patch for 7 days that would confirm whether they were experiencing AF. 34% of the notified participants in this study were confirmed to have AF from the chest patch. AF can be intermittent, so even if someone has it, there’s no guarantee it would show up during the chest patch period.