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

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

#381

Post by throwaway8689 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #118
DuskStar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What we list for legal purposes" and "what the device actually does" might not be the same thing. I imagine saying "my device detects heart attacks" gets the FDA involved and makes everything ten times more expensive...

Differentiating between cardiac arrest and taking the watch off your wrist may be interesting. And I kinda wonder how good any single-lead EKG would be at detecting a heart attack when your heart is still beating. Even the expensive multi-lead machines usually auto-diagnose me with an old infarction, which is false.

I'd guess taking the watch off would produce a classic flat line. A heart in arrest which is in the process of dying will produce irregular electrical output.

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

#382

Post by vinni2 »

snuxoll wrote: post #328
rosybox wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I ordered my grandmother a Series 5 for this feature alone, in fact it just arrived at my door today and she’s coming over later this week so I can get it setup and walk her through the basics. She has a hard time getting up from the floor if she kneels or sits down as is, one good fall from a cat tripping her or something is likely to be devastating.

Just curious did she already have an iPhone? I want to buy one for my mother but she doesn’t use iPhone. First I would have to buy her an iPhone.

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

#383

Post by sh-run »

floil wrote: post #372
sh-run wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardly true, the two devices have very different purposes. I couldn't run an ultramarathon (or even a shorter trail race) in an apple watch. That's before we even start talking about features. The battery would die long before I finish. The FR945 that was released this year has far more features than the apple watch (including the emergency features). Even comparing the Apple Watch 4 to my FR935 (released in 2…

When I was a kid, my next door neighbor was an ultra-marathoner and the fittest person I'd ever met. He died suddenly one day of a heart attack while out on a run.

When this happens it's typically due to undiagnosed cardiomyopathy (which is very difficult to detect). It's true that when something like that happens to someone they would've lived longer had they not been an endurance athlete, but most endurance athletes live about as long as their less-active peers.

I get a yearly physical just to be safe, but honestly running is my favorite way to decompress and I'd need some kind of diagnosis before giving it up.

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

#384

Post by btach »

rootusrootus wrote: post #118
DuskStar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What we list for legal purposes" and "what the device actually does" might not be the same thing. I imagine saying "my device detects heart attacks" gets the FDA involved and makes everything ten times more expensive...

Differentiating between cardiac arrest and taking the watch off your wrist may be interesting. And I kinda wonder how good any single-lead EKG would be at detecting a heart attack when your heart is still beating. Even the expensive multi-lead machines usually auto-diagnose me with an old infarction, which is false.

Sometimes the rhythm may degrade into a ventricular rhythm, like v-tach then into v-fib if not treated. A heart can still pump in v-tach, albeit very inefficiently, but in v-fib, no blood is pumped. On the other hand, taking the watch off results in no signal input which is different than what you would see on the monitor for asystole.

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

#385

Post by killjoywashere »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #99
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.

I wondered the same: is it embarrassing here to think Apple does various things well?

Unbridled praise of any large corporation on HN is an invitation to accusations of fanboyism. Prefacing the comment with some sort of deprecation has become a cultural element of immune response to flamewars on HN.

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

#386

Post by killjoywashere »

oefrha wrote: post #362
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dear colleague died of a heart attack a couple months ago. His Apple Watch didn't save him. He collapsed at work. The Apple Watch is very explicit about not being a panacea, and currently only advertises detection of a specific kind of arythmia or elevated heart rate. Note that the original comment mentioned that fall detection was probably the trigger. I'm still pretty angry at the universe about my colleague's su…

Heart attacks are sudden and sometimes nothing could save you. My mother is a medical professional, and she told me the story about a doctor in her hospital: one morning he realized he was about to have a heart attack, called emergency services himself and left the door open; he was dead by the time the ambulance arrived, five to ten minutes later.

There was a legendary cardiologist at my medical school who predicted his own demise, took a Holter monitor home with him one night, wired himself up, went to sleep, never woke up, and left his colleagues with the 12-lead trace of his death.

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

#387

Post by ska »

DuskStar wrote: post #67
joshvm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specs for the watch specifically rule out heart attack detection, by the way. > Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks. If you ever experience chest pain, pressure, tightness, or what you think is a heart attack, call emergency services immediately.

"What we list for legal purposes" and "what the device actually does" might not be the same thing. I imagine saying "my device detects heart attacks" gets the FDA involved and makes everything ten times more expensive...

The specific language you are looking for here is "indications for use". The way the FDA works, you cannot advertise (even directly) a medical device for a usage you have not indicated in your filing and backed up with the required evidence. The level and type of evidence will depend on the type of filing and claims. A medical professional can advise for a different use (called "off label") but you, as the device developer, cannot even hint at it.

Aside: as others note, though, you can't really detect heart attacks well from something this simple.

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

#388

Post by snuxoll »

vinni2 wrote: post #382
snuxoll wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ordered my grandmother a Series 5 for this feature alone, in fact it just arrived at my door today and she’s coming over later this week so I can get it setup and walk her through the basics. She has a hard time getting up from the floor if she kneels or sits down as is, one good fall from a cat tripping her or something is likely to be devastating.

Just curious did she already have an iPhone? I want to buy one for my mother but she doesn’t use iPhone. First I would have to buy her an iPhone.

We just switched her to an iPhone 8 recently because her Lumia 950 wouldn’t hold a charge and W10M is going EOL soon anyway.

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

#389

Post by Rapzid »

shanev wrote: post #379
Rapzid wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem like outsized thought and effort given the companies size, resources, and relatively small product focus..

Apple has had strong accessibility features since before they were a household name, when they were a fraction of the size of the company they are today. Here's a post from 2006 for example, talking about accessibility in Mac OS 9: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/724948 . Here's about accessibility in Mac OS X Tiger (2005): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger#Accessibility .

It's 2019, not 1980.

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

#390

Post by ihattendorf »

ferongr wrote: post #368
djrogers wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue that I have is that every wearable device expects you to allow upload of sensitive information to their servers This is not the case with the Apple Watch - your Health data lives and dies on your phone unless you back it up or choose to share it with other apps.

How do you know that? Have you examined the source code?

How far do you go with that? Have you examined your CPU with an electron microscope? What about the motherboard? Every peripheral? Where does it end? At some point you have to trust someone.
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