I Now Have a Cardiologist
joecieplinski.com
joecieplinski.com
Although my case is infrequent enough that it is not thought of as a risk by the medical community, for peace of mind what I would really like to have is a link between a watch of some sort and a car capable of self driving. Should I be driving when I go unconscious, all the car would need to do is automatically kick in autopilot mode while gradually slowing down, until a heart rhythm is detected again.
The risk is small, if you consider the percentage of time I'm behind the wheel, but it would be good for peace of mind. It would also be helpful for others who do not yet know they have a heart condition, or those who are having a stroke or epileptic attack while at the wheel. There are others with worse conditions than mine who are basically advised not to drive, so it would help them as well.
If falling asleep can be detected by any biological signals, that would also be a useful autopilot trigger while waking the driver up, for the general population.
Currently most cars require manually activating the autopilot mode; what I'm proposing is a vital sign monitor to automatically begin self-driving if the human is incapacitated.
If the human doesn't wake up within a half a minute or so, the car could also self-drive itself to a hospital. I think we're far enough with self-driving tech that that saved life would far outweigh the risks of the self-driving system having any issues en route.
I think you're onto a good idea, except for the above quote. It would be a much better idea to have the car automatically pull over to the shoulder, stop, engage the flashers, and call 911. Paramedics can keep you alive en route to the hospital with drugs, cardioversion, and CPR. Your car cannot.
The idea that we're going to start vectoring ambulances to intercept self-driving cars carrying heart attack victims is pretty crazy awesome.
Pushed out further, I don't mind if some rich guy wants me to pull over to get out of his way for a 50 dollar micropayment.
Where I live, in the order of 10 % of road casualties are actually casualties of heart attack or stroke; there is no actual road accident at all except that the car perhaps stops - but yes, the government still counts them as "road casualties" because that validates car and fuel taxes.
Paramedics and EMTs can work these questions quickly and they have lights and sirens to get through traffic. Your car will probably google "hospitals" and (slowly) take you to the nearest one, which might be a closed methadone clinic.
In most cities, an ambulance is going to get to your car much quicker than your car would get you to an appropriate hospital. A modern ACLS rescue unit is effectively a heart hospital on wheels. So calling 911 brings the hospital to you, without putting anybody else on the road in danger from your car's not-yet-quite-ready-for-unsupervised-operation autopilot software.
It could even work if you are at home and have an emergency. Call 911 and if they decide you should go to a health center on your own it will send where to go to your car.
Of course at first wait for help should be the default, but when automated driving improves, and the processing of emergencies improves too, an automated response system should be the norm for most of the time.
I'm also thought to be under control via medications now, and also am scheduled for an ablation procedure which may cure it altogether. The bad news about medications, and that procedure, is that it's hard to know whether it cured it, considering how infrequently they happen. I could go another 10 years without incident and then it happens again -- or I could go my entire life and it never happens -- nobody knows. So the best I can do at the moment is to just carry on with life.
That said though, I would still feel emotionally safer if the car drove itself, or at least could detect such things. Not only for myself, but for the sake of those people who have incurable frequent instances of incapacitation -- they actually are not advised to never drive -- as well as the entire rest of the population that is over-stressed and under-slept.
Also, I feel what has happened to me could happen to anyone. Doctors haven't been able to diagnose any particular cause, but I have been under extreme work stress over the years, and the connection between that and heart failure among other things is really not well understood. Extreme electrolyte loss is another way any otherwise normal person could go into ventricular fibrillation as well, and that's not something everyone is educated about.
I bike most of the time, and drive only occasionally, by the way. If you look at that in isolation, yes, I'm more likely to die being incapacitated on a bike than in a car. But if you look at the problem holistically, biking is more likely to improve my cardiac condition over time via much needed exercise, as well as the reduction in stress by doing stuff I enjoy doing. For all we know, living a life of abstaining from everything could be far more likely to pile on stress that could potentially make things worse.
What if the self-driving tech kills both you and someone else on the route?
So then the question becomes what other daily device(s) could be made to do automatic health checks of certain specific indicators, which would give an early indication to the possible condition, thus improving life expectancy and quality of life, while lowering associated medical costs.
i.e. toothbrushes that detect cavities, sunglasses that check your pupils for certain symptoms, hats that monitor your EEG. These are obviously extreme examples, but you get the idea...
The lady complains but I think she enjoins it. It's fun to complain and be heard, even if it seams minuscule annoyances to any observer.
No one would like this. It is an interesting idea.
What if on major airports (or other similar venues) there were paid toilets where you could do whatever business you want to do there and exit, only to receive a test result later on if something weird showed up?
Could this be doable?
Perhaps by taking a photo of the solid & liquid expelled from your body and trying to eliminate or reduce water contamination from the solid parts, and collecting it as you usually do in a lab?
Sorry if this all sounds stupid. My experience with biology is close to zero, and I have no clue about what I'm talking about — just thinking out loud.
The nation of Germany?
What other everyday objects could be utilized? What about my phone’s front facing camera to scan my face looking for muscle twitches or eye issues?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/upshot/preventive-health-...
> Preventive Care Saves Money? Sorry, It’s Too Good to Be True
> The idea that spending more on preventive care will reduce overall health care spending is widely believed and often promoted as a reason to support reform. It’s thought that too many people with chronic illnesses wait until they are truly ill before seeking care, often in emergency rooms, where it costs more. It should follow then that treating diseases earlier, or screening for them before they become more serious, would wind up saving money in the long run.
> Unfortunately, almost none of this is true.
The byline is "Contrary to conventional wisdom, it tends to cost money, but it improves quality of life at a very reasonable price."
and the article closes with this
But money doesn’t have to be saved to make something worthwhile. Prevention improves outcomes. It makes people healthier. It improves quality of life. It often does so for a very reasonable price.
There are many good arguments for increasing our focus on prevention. Almost all have to do with improving quality, though, not reducing spending. We would do well to admit that and move forward.
Sometimes good things cost money.
If we’re going to spend huge amounts of money we should spend it better than on preventive care, on areas where the money can do more good. That money could be spent on foreign aid, on saving lives, not improving them, on earned income tax credit, to encourage people to get back into work or gain more work experience, on basic research or subsidy to get us to carbon neutral faster.
And the article completely fails to note the false positives, the unnecessary tests and the worry caused by preventive screening.
Money spent on preventive medicine isn’t wasted but it could certainly be better spent.
> In 2009, as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Synthesis Project, Sarah Goodell, Joshua Cohen and Peter Neumann exhaustively explored the evidence. They examined more than 500 peer-reviewed studies that looked at primary (stopping something from happening in the first place) or secondary (stopping something from getting worse) prevention. Of all the interventions they looked at, only two were truly cost-saving: childhood immunizations (a no-brainer) and the counseling of adults on the use of low-dose aspirin. An additional 15 preventive services were cost-effective, meaning that they cost less than $50,000 to $100,000 per quality adjusted life-year gained.
That's a very disingenuous summary born out of a "economics trump everything" mentality. If you believe that humans are more important than money it is wrong and the original articles byline is a better summary:
Contrary to conventional wisdom, it tends to cost money, but it improves quality of life at a very reasonable price.
If we want to improve health outcomes we could do many things more effective than increasing preventive care. Nurse practitioners cost half as much as doctors and are just as effective at primary care. That’s a genuine huge bang for the buck intervention that could be done and isn’t. Never mind preventive medicine. Do something that actually works instead.
Primary Care Outcomes in Patients Treated by Nurse Practitioners or Physicians: A Randomized Trial. JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association. 283. 59-68. 10.1097/00132586-200012000-00026.
I estimate I'm saving between $200k and $500k annually by doing things like eating right and getting enough exercise.
Well, TBF, that's really for two people eating right etc. I, personally, am probably saving only half that.
The Smart toilet idea has been parodied a lot though and none exist as far as I know. Maybe it’s just not feasible?
Be careful with this. Look into the result of increase PSA testing:
> Although experts are somewhat split on the value of PSA tests as a screening tool, there is widespread agreement on two major points: overdiagnosis and overtreatment rates are far too high, and there is an urgent need to refine PSA testing to be a more effective screening tool. [1]
Or mammograms
> We conclude that the mammography FP rate in North America is in excess... [2]
Arguably, the issue is that we just lack good baseline data, but you have to consider all the false positives you'll get with more data collection.
[1]: https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/the-pros-and-cons-...
Thanks to an Apple Watch w/ ECG, I now have a cardiologist, too. My A-fib burden is only 4% and at my age without diabetes my increased stroke risk is minimal, so my Dr. basically asked why I was bothering to wear this thing if it was just worrying me unnecessarily.
I mostly agree. It is nice to finally know what's going on because I've been having irregular heartbeat when exercising for over 5 years & a stress test (ECG on a treadmill) didn't show anything. Now I've had 2 weeks of monitoring with an iRhythm Zio & an echocardiogram so I know I'm reasonably safe to continue exercising.
Is it worth the $$$ insurance paid for all of it? I'm really not sure about that. I kind of wish the Dr. had told me "lose some weight or you'll drop dead" because I would have listened. I'm also not sure what I would have done if I hadn't been able to figure out what was happening. Probably just continue to keep my rate under 150 as it's a high rate that usually correlates with irregular beats.
The heart is pretty complex for being 'just a pump'. Things can and do go wrong in ~100% of the population. Whether or not that's a problem that should be monitored, medicated or operated on, depends on many factors. It isn't as clearcut as saying "you've got afib and we need to fix that".
Does he feel car insurance and home insurance are useless since he didn't total his car last year and his house didn't burn down?
He knows this (as he mentions it obliquely) that he could lower his deductible but his costs would go up. Is he complaining that he is on the wrong part of that tradeoff curve? Or does he expect low-cost insurance with a low deductible that covers all of his routine medical expenses?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription...
With family members, they are all absolutely living in parallel and at the same time.
Even so, a $20k a year is peanuts compared to the out-of-pocket expenses of a serious medical emergency. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking insurance is not with it just because you haven’t had to use it yet.
I wonder how much of this is due to the repeal of the individual mandate, which Wikipedia says takes effect this year.
And that’s the most annoying part. The fact that $20,000 is considered peanuts in a medical condition is already outrageous. My friend’s wife had a c-section child delivery and was billed $38,000...for a 3 days stay at the hospital. No complications just a planned c-section. I understand that’s the reason why the insurance is so high
There was a lot of effort, planning, and training that goes into making sure that there aren't any complications. Not to mention the fact that even routine procedures can have unexpected complications that have to be planned for and addressed. I think that $38k for a surgical procedure with post-operative care for the mother and child isn't necessarily that outrageous. Just imagine the people, training, facilities, etc...
EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about it -- was the $38k bill with or without insurance? Meaning, was this their out of pocket costs with insurance? If so, that does seem rather unreasonable. If that was the billed rate for the insurance company and your friend's out of pocket costs were lower, that would make more sense.
I know nothing about how the financial side of European hospitals work though... but I assume they still have internal costs that are tracked and tallied. Your kids' deliveries may not have cost you, but there was a total cost somewhere in the system. It probably wasn't anywhere near $38k, but even that isn't a fair comparison due to the substantial differences between the medical systems and the way indirect costs could be covered.
(I'm not trying to defend one system or the other, just pointing out that the systems are different so direct comparisons like $38k vs €0 aren't that straightforward. It gets even less straightforward when you factor in the US medical insurance system.)
This was a few years ago so the prices may have changed.
But, I think the main question I was trying to get at is -- how much are the French (or Japanese from a different thread) hospitals subsidized by the government. I expect for there to be indirect costs that might have to be covered by direct billing in one country, but not another. For example, electricity bills (or the cost of the building, etc)... is this covered by the 1000€ bill, or is is paid for by some other means? I recognize that US hospitals also get some level of subsidy, but there are hidden costs that aren't always apparent.
This is what I was trying to get at... that direct comparisons of costs aren't always that straightforward when comparing different systems. A 2000€ or $2000 bill might represent only a fraction of the actual cost of treatment. And given the opaque nature of heathcare billing, it's very hard to know.
Then shouldn't you read up on that before expounding upon how a 38k price tag for a scheduled routine procedure is reasonable? Healthcare billing isn't that shocking when you travel outside of the states.
I simply believe that not becoming broke by a scheduled or unscheduled medical procedure is a human right and it's realistic to achieve. I'm not saying it should be free - I pay quite a bit of medical insurance to the state, but it's mostly transparent as it's included in the income tax deductions.
It’s a weird case too because if she gets the care she needs she stands to live a long life, be of normal intelligence, she has a good chance of walking, etc. She’s so darned cute and gregarious, cooing and laughing, you’d never know she had all these problems if you saw her out and about.
So I guess my daughter is the reason insurance is so expensive. But after getting page after page of “100% covered $3000” pages for each day she’s spent in the hospital, I’m really glad to have the insurance I do, because a place where the government decides how much to spend on care would have given up on her months ago.
I (or my insurance) wasn't charged half of that for a post-operative 48 hours in an ICU after quad bypass surgery.
The US already has a third of its population covered by "socialized medicine". That's what Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare /VA are. The "socialized" adjective is a canard introduced by the health care "industry" in the US to scare people.
US Medicare admin costs are below 5% pa, the health insurance "industry" doing the same thing, are 20% of their revenue.
> the government decides how much to spend on care
This is true, there are limits to what the government will pay. The NHS, which isn't far from the gold-standard for socialized medical care, does indeed not stock some drugs that are deemed too expensive. Here's a good write-up of QALY's and the NHS:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-28983924
If your child had been born with spina bifida in the UK, all treatment would have been free. This treatment would include (from 2018) pre-natal surgery, post-natal surgery, physiotherapy for life, occupational therapy for life, special educational needs, mobility aids for life, and all manner of treatment for association problems, including kidney treatment for life[0]. Here's a summary of the NHS treatment for it:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/spina-bifida/treatment/
> In a country with socialized medicine they’d probably have just let her die
How much research did you actually do on this point? I'm always amazed by how much Americans suck up the death panels bullshit. If a fraction of what all y'all believe about socialized medicine was true, then free medical care wouldn't be free at point of use in literally every other civilized country on the planet.
That you are willing to believe all the world except Americans are idiots for the way we have our healthcare setup beggars belief, and reflects poorly.
Just to add to the discussion, I've been self employed and on ACA plans for several years now (with my family). I'm grateful to have the option, and it's miles ahead of what we had prior to the ACA.
The whole health system in the US is horrible. Nobody should need to go through a middle-man (a.k.a. insurance) in the first place. No wonder prices for everything are absurdly high.
Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts.
> Edit: and I have an anecdote about this too. Last year I had an episode of AFib. I've been taking medication since then. So after almost 1 year taking a certain medication, my insurance rejected it, saying they wouldn't pay for it and that I had to switch to something else. Now, why is it OK for an insurance company to dictate what I can or cannot take, if my doctor prescribed me something? How on earth is it OK for insurance to dictate what treatments I can or cannot have? I feel like a piece of meat when I go to a clinic and they need to call my insurance to see if it is OK to give me a certain treatment. This is nuts.
Dictating what treatments you can and cannot have is how health systems all over the world control costs. Many systems do this much more aggressively than in the U.S. The U.K. NHS, for example, will only spend about 20-30,000 pounds per "quality-adjusted life year," or about double that for end-of-life drugs. In the U.S., it is routine to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a couple of extra years. (The historic practice in the U.S. was to have lifetime limits--typically in the several million dollar range, but even those are illegal under the ACA.)
I moved from the US to Switzerland. The systems can't be compared.
Yes Switzerland has private insurers but the industry is highly regulated:
- Costs of medications and procedures are regulated and capped.
- There's a mandatory level of insurance everyone must have. This covers basically everything except dental.
- The pricing of this mandatory insurance has a cap based on age (younger people pay less), location and deductible (the max deductible is 2500 CHF).
- The excess is capped at 700 CHF/yr (i.e. the max you ever pay in a year is premiums + deductible + 700).
- This mandatory insurance cannot be denied.
- This insurance costs ~230 CHF/month on the low end (from https://www.priminfo.admin.ch/de/praemien)
- (Not related to insurers): If you have very low income, you can receive government assistance with which you can pay for insurance.
As an Australian, the Swiss system feels much closer to the single payer end of the spectrum than the free for all of America.
My point was to compare it to pre ACA. Our system improved significantly when the ACA was passed.
Now, if you're sharing the cost of a treatment with someone, they're always going to have a say in the treatment you get, unfortunately.
That's true under any system.
Your doctor may have been incentivized by the pharma company to prescribe their more expensive product.
Australia generally has great "free" healthcare but even then it is complicated with rebates and gaps etc, its not completely "free" but there isn't exactly a limit on what you can have done under Medicare. If you have private medical insurance (an option not a requirement) then you can get a nicer hospital and not pay for the extra requirements.
In the UK you just get fixed and never see a bill in your life - everyones tax pays for it. Again not exactly "free" but you don't "pay" for it. Again, if you have private you can get a better hospital, choose your doctor etc.
The way I see it the US could 'have its cake and eat it' but there is significant opposition to anything that seems "Socialist" because the moguls who run these private health insurance companies are making too much money to change the system.
No, the Australian medicare system is not remotely close to being great. When a simple CT scan/MRI can take 4 months waiting time [1], I wouldn't jump up and defend such a failed system. It is not great, it is the complete opposite of that. Ever tried to do some dentals using that "free" healthcare you mentioned or ever tried 12-18 months elective surgery waiting time?
[1] https://www.2gb.com/hospital-waiting-times-for-crucial-surge...
0. Everyone pays a 1.5% "extra" tax for Medicare, but that's actually just a cover. The actual cost to government is much higher, but is paid out of general revenue.
1. GPs and specialists are reimbursed by the government at a govt decided rate for different procedures.
2. The GPs/specialists can "bulk bill" in which case patients don't pay, or there is a "gap" that has to be paid by the patient. The gap cannot be covered by insurance (by law).
3. Medicines that are approved by an independent body are subsidized on the Pharmaceutical Benefits System (PBS). Once on that list (and most meds are), the cost to the patient is $35 for a prescription, subsidized to $6 for those on welfare. My meds (statin, beta blocker, ACE inhibitor, metformin etc) cost me about $100/month.
4. Public hospitals are free at point of use by patients. This includes all ER, surgery etc. However, because this is a limited resource, there are waiting lists for different procedures, managed based on urgency. If I'd gone to a public hospital ER for my heart attack, the treatment would have been as quick and as good as what I got when I went to a private hospital ER. Oh, except that the private ER cost me $400.
5. Private insurance is available. For me, the insurance costs $300/month (ie, $3600 pa). This allows me to use private hospitals within a wide network (with a $400/per admittance excess), ancilliary benefits like optical ($200 pa) etc. It also allows me the choice of specialist/surgeons in hospital and things like private rooms.
It may not be "great", but compared to the US it's much much better. There are no/zero/nada cases of "medical bankruptcy" here. ER costs are not in the thousands, bills aren't ridiculous, my entire treatment regime over 2 years and 2 admittals to hospital cost me less than $10K because I chose my cardiologist and surgeon. If I'd gone "public", the cost would have been $0.
Our public hospitals are the "teaching hospitals" and our medical research and results are world leading. Our GPs are primarily focussed on care and patient outcomes, they now spend a lot of time as case managers, for example, my T2 care plan is managed by my GP but involves a dietician, an endocrenologist etc.
I am very happy with the healthcare in Australia so far (I haven't had to use it much thankfully) and like the NHS there will always be waiting times for non urgent surgeries - I think most people would prefer than than a 6 figure bill (which they can also choose to have if they go private)...
I don't know if you can hold up that 2GB article as anything conclusive. The plural of anecdotes not being data and all that.
I've lived under the UK, AU and US systems. Ours isn't the best, but fuck living under the nightmare that is healthcare in the US.
with heart rate in 120 bpm? to me that is the pretty opposite of "excellent health".
I don't own a home. I drive an old (and thus, inexpensive to replace) car. To save money, I have the highest deductible offered by my insurance company. That ensures that when something small happens, unless it affects drivability, I'm not going to fix it.
The value I see that I get out of car insurance (besides the legal requirement) is its health insurance, e.g., if I get in a crash and need $50K for emergency surgery, or if I get in a wreck with another driver who was (illegally) driving without insurance and they needed surgery.
In other words, apart from the health insurance aspect (which should be single-payer anyway), yes, I think car insurance is pretty much useless for me.
I understand why governments institute requirements like this -- it's a systems-thinking solution which is probably better than not having it -- but pretty much by definition any private insurance system is going to be a financial loser for a lot of people.
I don't have to pay to insure my money -- the bank pays the FDIC from my capital. It seems weird to me that I have to pay for personal insurance at all. Why don't fuel taxes and license fees provide for auto insurance? Why doesn't federal income tax provide for health insurance? Various other countries do these and they seem to work fine. Yeah, I know: politics.
My dad is a triple bypass heart patient. ECG and stress tests did diddly squat to detect it, until it was too late and it was diagnosed by a CT Angiogram. I now get CT Angiogram with contrasts every few years just to be safe because of family history.
[1]https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fs_atr...
There are 329 million people in the US. 1 in 122 (329/2.7) people is not "very rare". 1 in 55 (329/6) people is even less so.
Original: I don't think they enable the ECG feature for anyone outside the US. It's locked based on the point of sale last I checked. Very frustrating to buy something so expensive to find out it's been region-locked!
But I only found that out after spending 3 days income on the device - because who would expect that a heavily promoted feature WASN’T available?
I understand Apple’s choices of communication from their perspective as a for-profit business, which only makes me unhappier.
That seems insanely high
edit: just checked again and nope, that was pre-doctor visit. Something that high would certainly cause me to worry.
During a-fib, the electrical impulses are all off. The peaks and valleys are irregularly spaced and the amplitudes vary from cycle to cycle. This usually results in a rapid heart rate as a second order effect because, due to the "misfiring" not enough blood is pumping through and your heart is working harder to make up for the difference.
If you're worried about an elevated resting heart rate, go get an ECG done. Don't let random people on the internet talk you into health anxiety.
So for someone who is say 30, your maximum rate is ~187. But a rate over 90 when resting is considered outside normal levels.
If you have no history of cardiac disease and aren't taking any medications that would cause an increased rate, if your resting rate is 113-120, you need to be checked.
This is looking at it backwards. How many serious health problems have similar rates of affliction? If there are 50 different potential health problems then he has a 2 in 3 chance of having at least one of those.
So if you're a doctor it's really unlikely that you patient has either of those. But start adding up all of those rare syndromes and it starts getting scary.
One had better be okay with it, because if you don't consent, they'll take the money from you by force.
Grandfather discovers heart condition thanks to children’s museum exhibit
https://kdvr.com/2019/02/21/grandfather-discovers-heart-cond...
I don't think I submitted it to HN. I felt it would be viewed as fluff.
But we have incredible and constantly increasing opportunities to casually check biometrics that previously required serious medical exams and lab work, etc. It's absolutely changing things.
The reason is I would suggest the watch is their ECG is tuned quite well.
Remember it’s possible to not be in constant afib. That’s where the watch really shines.
Now it's a questionnaire instead. I think the new system works better here since it's one less hurdle to get over before you can sign up for a gym and work out.
Tangential question, related to the above: I am currently paying for COBRA, and the amount paid is outragerous. Anyone has suggestions for a cheaper, good enough alternative?
Yeah that should have been a red flag in itself
Also remember that while it will give "true positive" results, there will be a lot of borderline or non-worrying alarms that will need to be checked.
> resting heart rate being in the 113-120 bpm range
with such readings, I guess one would just go to see a doc?
It takes the form of a combination of very high output training (BJJ) coupled with regular, sustained aerobic training at a high percentage of my aerobic capacity (running and plyometrics).
It sounds like I'm being flip, or worse, self-satisfied - but I am quite serious.
If my heart started behaving strangely, or weakened in some way, I would notice immediately. It would be quite marked. Things that I partake in, and think about, and feel, would suddenly be off.
Or to put it more technically, I am running my body at a much lower set of tolerances where defects are immediately identifiable.[1]
I have a suspicion that my cardiologist is actually better than the apple one, since I could feel some differences that might not yet manifest themselves in some kind of measurable heart output.
The downside to all of this, in the faraway future (I am currently 42 years old) is that "heart trouble" might manifest itself during exercise in a sudden and acute fashion that leaves me dead. On the other hand, the exercise makes that, statistically, less likely.
I also enjoy it very much, so there's that.
[1] https://www.keyence.com/ss/products/measure/measurement_libr...
Actually depending on your condition and your activities, it’s entirely possible that the first warning you’d have is dropping dead. I’m also not being flip or self-satisfied, and I also have an anecdote to share. A good friend of mine who was a serious tennis players, and later an equally serious swimmer and runner got his “warning” about two years ago. He was at a conference and complained of feeling a bit ill. Then he experienced sudden cardiac arrest and despite an AED on premises he died.
He wasn’t much older than you, was in perfect shape and ate well his whole life, saw his doctor and had good lab numbers. The “far future” you imagine is hopefully just that, far in the future, but it might not be. Like a lawyer as their own client, don’t be a fool and pretend to be your own cardiologist.
Yes, that's exactly what I said.
Just asking... Because if the value prop is that they can detect, then they should have some accountability for non-detected positives, no?
This is just basic medical stuff.
Are people be better off without the watch altogether if it does not have perfect detection?
Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. I don't think we should hold Apple/the watch accountable for type II errors for similar reasons as to why we have Good Samaritan laws.
The device has been given a class II clearance by the FDA, which means it has to “ provide reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness “.
False negative rates are definitely one of the things that are considered in getting this. That doesn’t mean false negatives aren’t possible.
On the other hand, of course it's great to save lives and help you detect possibly harmful conditions. The thing that makes me uneasy is not the idea of a heart tracker watch per se, but the possibility that maybe one day the facebook app wants access or chrome because of WebHeartBeat API or whatever. This trend of constantly increasing amounts of data sources sent to the cloud is sick.
Heart rate information, like all health information gathered by Apple Watch, stays on your device unless you choose to back it up to iCloud. In this case it is end-to-end encrypted.