Apple Watch and Other Wearable Devices It may help your long-term health goals more than you think.
Some doctors recommend this Medical Equipment It can help diagnose and manage certain conditions. Heart disease Monitoring and Post-Surgery Recovery.
“There are a lot of health benefits to using these devices,” said Dr. Rod Passman, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Northwestern Medicine.
“It empowers patients to be involved in their own health care and understand that their lifestyle choices can impact their health. And from my perspective, it allows you to remotely monitor patients over long periods of time, anywhere in the world, just by taking an EKG on the watch itself, and understand what’s going on with their heart rhythm,” Passman told CBS News. “So I think this is a very powerful tool, and many of us are using it not just to diagnose disease, but also to manage disease, maybe abnormal rhythms and things like that.”
Passman said “a diagnosis isn’t made just because the clock says something is wrong,” but it can be a useful tool in aiding the diagnostic process.
“We always want to get medical-level confirmation before we start treatment, but our understanding is that this is a pretty accurate tool to detect. Abnormal rhythmCertainly, an ECG interpreted by a skilled physician can be incredibly powerful,” he said.
Passman is leading a National Institutes of Health-funded study aimed at understanding whether people with arrhythmias could receive personalized care using these devices.
“For example, rather than taking anticoagulants 12 months of the year, a watch could tell you when you need to take your anticoagulant, allowing you to receive the benefits of the medication while minimizing the risks,” he said.
Passman said the Apple Watch isn’t the only brand with comparable benefits, pointing out that devices from Samsung, Fitbit and Cardia, for example, each have their own advantages.
“I really encourage patients to get a device that is compatible with their phone and that also has cost limitations,” he said. “The options will expand to more devices, more rings, more wearables, and probably even more compatibility with other platforms.”