Apple Watch Detects Abnormal Heart Rhythm With 97% Accuracy, Claims Study

As per a study conducted through heartbeat measurement app, Cardiogram along with the University of California, the Apple Watch provides 97% accurate result while detecting abnormal heartbeat rate. The study was conducted involving about 6158 participants selected through the Cardiogram app on Apple Watch. This App gives accurate result when paired with AI algorithm.

Each of the participants used the app on the Apple Watch to monitor their heart rate. Interestingly, most of the participants had normal EKG readings, while 200 participants suffered from an occasional, irregular heart beat, MacRumors reported. Now, the data from these participants along with data from normal Cardiogram app users was used to form a neutral network. This would help recognize the abnormal heartbeat solely from the data collected by the Apple Watch.

Cardiogram started the study with UCSF in the year 2016 to study if Apple Watch could detect an upcoming stroke. About a quarter of strokes are caused due to irregular heart rate, as per Brandon Ballinger, data scientist for UCSF and Cardiogram co-founder. Cardiogram also tested the deep network against 52 in hospital cardioversions, a procedure that restores normal heart beat; found that it gave about 97% accuracy to find an irregular heartbeat.

As of now, this is just a study built on an initial algorithm, but it does promise to identify as well as prevent stroke in the near future. According to BGR, while speaking about the results and its success, Dr. Gregory Marcus, the study's senior author, said the following in a statement: "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."

The Cardiogram app also plans to work harder before using the algorithm to start notifying the app users of arrhythmias. Experts do feel that the company still needs to conduct more tests to check if the app works on different conditions and so all Cardiogram users could use it.