Date: 16th March 2019
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a major contributor to stroke and heart disease, however, its often intermittent appearance means that symptoms can be mild or absent, making detection and diagnosis difficult and leading to the condition regularly remaining undiagnosed. The recent explosion of wearables to provide basic health information, however, presents a potential new opportunity to explore live, real-time monitoring and now researchers at Stanford University have presented preliminary data supporting the use of the Apple watch to identify heart rate irregularities indicative of this condition.
With the ever-increasing uptake of wearables and the drive for making more informed health and clinical decisions, this work further fuels possibilities for helping to improve early detection strategies across a potentially broader scope of non-communicable disease states.
