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Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

seattletimes.com

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Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#161

Post by pseudalopex »

FireBeyond wrote: post #41
wtracy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those services rely on manual intervention from staff in a call center. If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.

I do have a horse in the race. Not the one you might think, but as a paramedic/firefighter, I'm not sure you can argue that "attempts to verify (human or otherwise) that there is a medical incident before dispatching EMS" is automatically worse than "calls 911 from the device automatically". > If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency servi…

Apple watches have audible and haptic alerts and a delay before calling emergency services.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#162

Post by JshWright »

saagarjha wrote: post #109
FireBeyond wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or diagnose Afib is like bonus time Careful with that as an assumption: > In people younger than 55, Apple Watch’s positive predictive value is just 19.6 percent. That means in this group — which constitutes more than 90 percent of users of wearable devices like the Apple Watch — the app incorrectly diagnoses atrial fibrillation 79.4 percent of the time. (You can try the calculation yourself using this Bayesian cal…

In this case, it's better to have a false positive diagnosis than a false negative.

Not necessarily, no... There are costs to false positives (money, time, stress, etc).

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#163

Post by JshWright »

saagarjha wrote: post #125
jessaustin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? IANAPhysician, but this seems like a fairly rare malady in this age group. Do we really want all of these people rushing to the hospital? If no one trusts the Apple Watch's diagnosis, how useful could it be?

I think the rate is low enough that most people are not getting multiple spurious notifications to rush to the hospital, so trust is probably not the issue. The only problem I see is hospitals being overwhelmed, but again, I'm not sure if we're really overloading them.

The fact that the baseline rate is so low is why this sort of widespread testing isn't really helpful, and can do more harm than good. The wider the net you cast, and the more rare the target condition, the lest useful the test becomes.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#164

Post by theironlily »

loeg wrote: post #159

> Then his helmeted head hit the ground so hard it knocked him unconscious — hard enough for his Apple Watch to feel it. > “A hit that hard could have killed me if I weren’t wearing it,” Burdett said. He had to replace the helmet. Letter to the editor: the last sentence is a non-sequitur. You have to replace a bike helmet any time it takes an impact, even if it isn't "so hard," because even if it doesn't look damaged…

Thank you for pointing that out. This is not common knowledge to many people.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#165

Post by ineedasername »

FireBeyond wrote: post #25

Life Alert, horrendous as their ads may be, would probably be surprised to hear that it's only now that you're finding a "device which can contact emergency services in the event of an accident" so life changing. As might OnStar, etc.

Life alert & OnStar are fairly singular function devices. Life alert is marketed pretty much exclusively to the elderly and does not have the ability to automatically call 911 in this way. OnStar is available in a single manufacturer's vehicles only, and you can't take it with you when you step onto the sidewalk. A device that monitors vitals as well as other potential situations and automatically gets an ambulance brought to your locations is quite a bit different than either of these.

I'm not claiming Apple has done something revolutionary. It's an evolution that builds on and combines various capabilities in a novel way. It's the sort of thing I could imagine seeing growing up watching "future" tv shows (Beyond 2000 ftw) and I love when technology produces something like that.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#166

Post by factsaresacred »

crushingcrash wrote: post #57
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do not use code blocks for quotes, it creates long side-scrolling windows.

Can someone fix this? WHERE'S DANG, he's sniffing around all the time. It has to be one line of CSS.

  white-space: pre-wrap;

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#167

Post by fouc »

a3n wrote: post #134
webwielder2 wrote: post #90

Why does everyone who praises Apple on HN qualify it with the fact that they don’t like Apple for other reasons? Also, Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.

> Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history. Ahem ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... They have better PR, arguably better products, and a more likeable CEO than other tech hyper-corporations. But they are fundamentally no different than any other self-aware pile of cash.

"Self-aware pile of cash" is actually quite an intriguing descriptor for corporations. Piles of cash with personhood rights.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#168

Post by jMyles »

Am I the only one concerned about the possible repercussions (to the wearer, I mean) of triggering a law enforcement response?

There have been multiple cases now where (American, obviously) Law Enforcement have brutalized and injured people experiencing diabetic shock.

And what if the fall and unconsciousness is the result of illicit drug use? Surely the wearer doesn't want a call to 911 to be the default behavior in that case.

Does Apple act with greater discretion in jurisdictions where law enforcement are known to be criminally brutal or corrupt? I suspect that the answer is "no."

Since people of color experience a greater proportion of negative outcomes from law enforcement contact, I surmise this feature is far more useful for white people.

Don't get me wrong - it's a cool feature for sure. But until we untangle law enforcement (and state brutality) from medical and fire response, it's potentially a dangerous one for some users.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#169

Post by rosybox »

cbsks wrote: post #150
Angostura wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its turned off by default if you are under a certain age - 60?

> If you've entered your age when you set up your Apple Watch or in the Health app and you're age 65 and over, this feature automatically turns on. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944

This is so amazing. Serious kudos to the apple watch team for this.
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