Apple Watch Gets the Green Light from the FDA for Monitoring Sleep Apnea
The center of attraction has been shifted to the sleep apnea detection feature on the Apple Watch, which has officially received its stamp of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With that, Series 10, 9, and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 will be able to monitor and notify the adult of sleep apnea risk. Apple’s being in the health tech market further deepens its roots in the category.
FDA approval announcement from the original Apple Watch: Apple strengthens health features with FDA clearance
Apple has been gradually expanding its line of OTC medical devices and has multiple products approved by the FDA. Well, gadgets such as AirPods 2 Pro models have been cleared as hearing aids for self-purchasing only some time ago. With the second generation in place, the AirPods Pro is now capable of performing the role and tasks of typical hearing aids, thus continuing to narrow consumer electronics with medical needs. Likewise, its smartwatches can now monitor and diagnose sleep apnea, a development that received its FDA nod recently. This further proves Apple’s consistent effort to improve health tracking with its line of wearable devices.
Samsung Also Enters into Sleep Apnea Detection Segment
It is important here to note that Apple is not the only innovator in this space. Samsung has also gotten an FDA nod for Sleep Apnea monitoring on its Galaxy Watch devices. Soon in July, Samsung users who own Galaxy Watch also began to get this feature in the One UI Watch 6 beta so that both Apple and Samsung have the feature that enables advanced sleep monitoring.
That is how sleep apnea detection works on the Apple Watch, and it has proved rather helpful in helping people with the condition, monitor their health properly.
Apple has previously said that sleep apnea detection could become available to some Apple Watch models. What is more, now that the FDA has approved it, the company should be able to advertise this feature much more actively. It should also be noted that, in its sleep apnea detection system, Apple uses the accelerometer located in the Apple Watch, which tracks micromovements of the wrist that occur when a person’s breathing is disrupted. If such disturbances occur consecutively for several nights, then maybe the patient is suffering from sleep apnea.
It means that eligible Apple Watches will distinguish these interferences as ‘elevated’ or ‘not elevated’; the user can find the data under the ‘Nightly Breathing Disturbances’ tab in the Health application on the iPhone. Apple created this feature through an array of machine learning and analyzed more than 30,000 clinical-grade sleep apnea tests, which proved to be valuable after a clinical trial.
Nevertheless, Apple confirms that this feature is intended to identify risks of moderate or severe OSA in adults who have not been previously diagnosed as such. This is not intended to serve as professional-grade medical devices for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
Taking the experience with the Apple Watch that received FDA approval, it is a powerful means for health supervision as well as for timely indication of possible health problems, however, it is a call that should always direct people to turn to their physicians for the proper diagnosis and proper treatment.
