Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

empirical.health

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 170 posts

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#71

Post by wizzwizz4 »

breck wrote: post #67
mikestew wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right, medical advice from the 1870s and TikTok videos, what could go wrong? But I did “look into ‘mouth taping’” as you suggested, and I’ll bet half the page titles were “Mouth-taping: is it safe?” or “…does it work?” At what point does Betteridge’s Law of Headlines[0] kick in? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

> You’re right, medical advice from the 1870s and TikTok videos, what could go wrong? Have you read the book? Do you think I'd be recommending something that didn't have a very strong dataset backing it? > At what point does Betteridge’s Law of Headlines[0] kick in? Nothing is easier to manipulate than digital symbols. Thus, when talking about patterns one finds in digital symbols, one much be very very careful to bu…

> Do you really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

— Buster Baxter (written by Matt Steinglass, 2005)

People make stuff up, especially online. If you expect others to believe you about your "very strong dataset", you should provide that very strong dataset (complete with provenance).

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#72

Post by jghn »

GaggiX wrote: post #18

The new Apple Watch 10 has an 18-hour battery life, so if you use it while you sleep, you won't have much left. I have no idea how some people can charge their smartwatch 1 or more times a day.

I can only speak for my S7 but with the fast charging mode it doesn't take long. My routine is I wake up, take off my watch, scan my phone for a bit, and take a shower. Almost every day it's fully charged by that point.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#73

Post by yareally »

breck wrote: post #32

If you're interested in this, I'd recommend reading the 1870 [public domain] book "Shut Your Mouth and Save your Life". Internet Archive has it: https://archive.org/details/b28114450 Also look into "mouth taping".

You mean the crazy theory this guy came up with after observing how Native Americans breathe through their noses?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Catlin#Observations_on_...

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#74

Post by MBCook »

jerlam wrote: post #9
brandonb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they also need oxygen saturation (introduced in the Apple Watch Series 6 in 2020) in order to make their overall sleep apnea detection algorithm work. Given that it only works with the Series 9 or above, it's possible they're also using the the temperature sensor as another input into their algorithm.

Did Apple resolve the patent issue that disabled oxygen saturation in the Series 9? Although it's possible that Sleep Apnea detection uses the oxygen saturation sensor but doesn't show its results directly.

No. I was very curious to see if it might be a last minute thing where it came back but the pages for the series 10 clearly don’t list it and if you use the comparison tool it’s highlighted as gone.

I hope it’s just still disabled. It would suck for someone to buy a new watch, the fix the dispute in 2 months, and you never get the feature until you buy another new watch.

They’re clearly not bending. I don’t know if they’ve given up or waiting on an appeal or maybe home a new administration will tell the ITC to go away or what.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#75

Post by lysace »

BeetleB wrote: post #69
lysace wrote: post #8

The gatekeeping in the CPAP field is so insane. 1. Yes, we should regulate manufacturers intensely. 2. No, we shouldn't regulate to whom companies should be allowed to sell them. The defaults are good enough for most. Provide an easy to use control for max pressure and people will figure it out. Perhaps a knob? I claim: During the past decade, the risk of being maltreated by a personally set-up CPAP unit has been far…

> During the past decade, the risk of being maltreated by a personally set-up CPAP unit has been far, far smaller than the risk of not being treated at all. There have been over 500 confirmed deaths due to the Philips CPAP. The number of unconfirmed deaths would be an order of magnitude higher, in my opinion. Thing is, the CPAP issue could be argued for both sides: "See how a small manufacturing defect could cause so…

"1. Yes, we should regulate manufacturers intensely."

These were units prescribed by licensed people. The issue here was the manufacturer.

As such I'm not sure what your complaint is.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#76

Post by MBCook »

a_vanderbilt wrote: post #20
cromka wrote: post #2

Considering they use accelerometer for it, nothing really stops them from adding this feature to all Apple Watches, potentially even the Series 1, right? Reserving it to Series 10 and 9 really exposes their lack of hardware innovation. I mean, we were talking about them measuring glucose levels for years and this is what we get as a new flagship feature?

Sure it probably comes down to sensor specs, but the same question can be asked about Apple Ingtelligence and the new iPhones. If the model is in a private cloud, why is it restricted to newer iPhones? Surely the preprocessing isn't so intensive that only the latest iPhones can do it. It's artificial segmentation in the interest of driving (historically weakening) sales.

It’s not all in a private cloud. Much is on device, and as we all know AI stuff loves CPU and RAM.

They appear to have restricted it to 8 GB of RAM devices or more (when those appear).

During The Talk Show interview at WWDC with John Gruber an Apple exec (Joz?) said they did it because of user experience issues, seeming implying speed.

And given how hard AI hits hardware I think that’s relatively believable.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#77

Post by rootusrootus »

BeetleB wrote: post #69
lysace wrote: post #8

The gatekeeping in the CPAP field is so insane. 1. Yes, we should regulate manufacturers intensely. 2. No, we shouldn't regulate to whom companies should be allowed to sell them. The defaults are good enough for most. Provide an easy to use control for max pressure and people will figure it out. Perhaps a knob? I claim: During the past decade, the risk of being maltreated by a personally set-up CPAP unit has been far…

> During the past decade, the risk of being maltreated by a personally set-up CPAP unit has been far, far smaller than the risk of not being treated at all. There have been over 500 confirmed deaths due to the Philips CPAP. The number of unconfirmed deaths would be an order of magnitude higher, in my opinion. Thing is, the CPAP issue could be argued for both sides: "See how a small manufacturing defect could cause so…

The Philips CPAP deaths were caused by a faulty machine, not by anything the users did wrong. Whether it was bought OTC or prescribed by a doctor would have no impact.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#78

Post by MBCook »

jghn wrote: post #72
GaggiX wrote: post #18

The new Apple Watch 10 has an 18-hour battery life, so if you use it while you sleep, you won't have much left. I have no idea how some people can charge their smartwatch 1 or more times a day.

I can only speak for my S7 but with the fast charging mode it doesn't take long. My routine is I wake up, take off my watch, scan my phone for a bit, and take a shower. Almost every day it's fully charged by that point.

The S9 was 80% in 45 minutes. The S10 is now 30 minutes.

A nice jump but not earth shattering.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#79

Post by rootusrootus »

jzig wrote: post #65
phickey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't advertise themselves as such, for obvious reasons, but there is at least one online CPAP dealer in the US that will sell to you without prescription verification. (Why should I wait 3 months for an appointment, drive an hour round trip, and $50 copay, to renew my rx so I can buy more masks, which wear out after a year or two?)

What to search for? Link?

I don't know who will do it without any kind of prescription, but it's pretty trivial to get an at-home test from someone like 1800cpap and they'll write a prescription based on the results. I bet they have a nearly 100% rate of writing prescriptions, given the obvious conflict of interest.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#80

Post by eddieroger »

lysace wrote: post #8

The gatekeeping in the CPAP field is so insane. 1. Yes, we should regulate manufacturers intensely. 2. No, we shouldn't regulate to whom companies should be allowed to sell them. The defaults are good enough for most. Provide an easy to use control for max pressure and people will figure it out. Perhaps a knob? I claim: During the past decade, the risk of being maltreated by a personally set-up CPAP unit has been far…

I'd argue the problem is gatekeeping access to medicine, since I don't think this is unique to CPAP. It should be easy to get in to a doctor, receive a test and diagnosis for sleep apnea (or anything), and proceed to treatment. Regulation is an after effect of the system. Maybe sane defaults are good most of the time, but no-one should be in a spot where they have to rely on defaults for care.
Post reply on HN