Health Spotlight: Smartwatches do more than you think

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Current statistics say that more than 200 million people worldwide wear smart watches, but statistics also show that your Fitbit or Apple watch can do much more than play music and track steps.

Whether it’s too fast or too slow, an irregular heartbeat may mean trouble, and you might already be using one of the newest tools in the fight against atrial fibrillation: your smartwatch.

A Stanford study of 400,000 people found Apple watches were able to correctly identify 84% of cases of A-Fib, as well as help doctors monitor patients pre- and post-operations.

Dr. Jeffrey DeClaire, an orthopedic surgeon at the Michigan Knee Institute, says he is currently part of an Apple watch study that gives him real-time data on his patients before and after knee replacements.

“A month before surgery, they started sending me educational information as well as exercises to do, and they track how you’re doing with your exercises,” Dr. DeClaire said.

Dr. DeClaire also says smartwatches track step counts, stride length, heart rate, and a variety of other data points that surgeons don’t normally track.

Smartwatches also benefit diabetics, as they can be used to monitor glucose levels without a pinprick blood test.

Sydnie Stephens-Boussard uses her smartwatch for this very reason. “When I’m going high, my watch will ding, and then when I’m going too low, it’ll also ding,” Stephens-Boussard said.

Other studies suggest wearable devices might also be able to catch other illnesses, like common colds, the flu, and even Lyme disease. Smartwatches are also becoming a popular method to monitor elderly family members.

Now that more technology is being used to monitor these cases, doctors say more focus will need to be done on ways to make health information secure and privacy compliant throughout the healthcare industry.