Apple talked about many thing at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this calendar month , but one that stimulate relatively short shrift was the Apple Watch . Now more than two year in , the Watch has undergone a major conversion from the production that was first announced , focusing in on specific uses like notifications , health , and physical fitness .
But some , myself admit , had expected to see a bigger push on the health front in watchOS 4 . A new marquee feature like rest tracking , perhaps . Or a glucose monitor . ( Apple mentioned that watchOS 4 will nowworkwith outside glucose varan , but if it ’s crop on such tech itself , it ’s not ready for prime time yet . )
While these type of health tracking features are all well and good , it would be far more interesting to see Apple leverage its technological creation to push wellness tech forward into an even more critical category : prevention . Or , to paraphrase the old locution , “ Everybody talk about their wellness , but nobody ever does anything about it . ”
Sick days
As with so many ideas of this form , this one farm out of personal experience . A few twenty-four hours ago I awaken up feeling smutty : cut cough , fluid nose , and generally resembling someone who ’d been run over by a hand truck . At one point , I checked my Apple Watch to see if my eye rate was elevated — it was n’t , peculiarly — but that got me wonder if there was data that could be collected and analyzed in such a way as topredictwhen you might be under the conditions .
Apple ’s already got some of the tools that it could bring to bear on this problem . The Apple Watch contain that heart charge per unit sensing element , for one thing , and it also garner information about your activity . Perhaps other sensors could be prepare to monitor your temperature or other vitals .
But what really involve to be brought to bear on this trouble , however , is Apple ’s machine learn algorithms . Analyzing approach pattern like this should be one of political machine learning ’s strengths . If you could feed it a bunch of data about your health , combined with an judgment about how you ’re finger , then perhaps it could start out building out models to get you know “ Hey , you might be getting a common cold ! ” It ’s not going to let you forbid getting sick entirely , of course , but you might be able-bodied to understate such an issue by using proactive measures like take it easy , hydrating more , up your intake of vitamin C or those zinc lozenges – whatever works for you .
In the same elbow room that the Apple Watch reminds you to brook up or to rest , it could rather give you prompting to take other legal action that might help improve your health and wellness or to stave in off sickness . as well , you may be capable to eventually use this information to facilitate other people , by account on what makes you feel well and then give out that data to others — and them with you .
Sweating the small stuff
indisputable , alerting masses to the possibleness that they have a coldness is barely one of the big problems in health . It ’s not curing cancer or heart disease or diabetes . But even these small things have the potential drop to improve a set of people ’s quality of life , and they ’re far more broadly applicable to the world at big .
More to the period , these sorts of small improvements can lead in turn to bigger implications . chase after the spread of certain diseases or shape of forward motion for colds and other viruses , for instance . Or being able to expand health assemblage information over a all-inclusive belt of the population . Apple ’s already started down this road with its ResearchKit , which furnish a theoretical account to let health professionals and researchers collect selective information for consider health subject , and CareKit , which lets developer pen apps that avail masses get by with their own medical stipulation .
One story in particular , though , stand out in this stadium : the report that the Apple Watch can faithfully detect atrial fibrillation , which is often hard to recognize , even for the mortal experiencing it . I can talk to this , as one of my close menage member has suffer from this condition for many years . While this kind of sleuthing is a far cry from being able to regale the trouble , it at least offers a peace of mind by giving a touch sensation of some way over this kind of continuing and seemingly random condition .
I continue to believe thathealth is a big partof the Apple Watch and whatever other wearable devices Apple might make . While I spat watchOS 4 ’s improvement , especially in the region of individualized fitness notice and challenges , I ’m promising that Apple will carry on to focus on these sorts of wide - range , envelope - push improvements that have the potential difference to change the mode we guess about our health on both a personal and a community - broad basis .
