![\"Apple](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/0c2c1027a70f52fac0a4ae601357cd0d030e5d0f.jpeg\")
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Apple Watch Sleep Apnoea notification.<\/p>\n
He says every motion in our body is connected.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo let\u2019s say I sneezed. You could see that in a motion detector at your wrist, even though you don\u2019t think of that as a \u2018wrist problem\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, when we\u2019re lying very still at night, even the motion of breathing can be felt at the wrist by the accelerometer within the watch.<\/p>\n
By wearing the device for at least 10 nights over 30 days (for the Samsung device, it\u2019s for at least two nights in a 10-day period), it captures our unique patterns, training the machine-learning algorithms to detect breathing disturbances.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if we see consistent elevations of that metric over time, that\u2019s when you earn yourself a notification,\u201d Bianchi says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to react to every blip or bad night that occasionally happens. We want to make sure that if we\u2019re poking you to go to the doctor \u2026 it\u2019s really a consistent finding, that it\u2019s accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n
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How accurate are they?<\/p>\n
When developing tests, researchers dance between its sensitivity, which is crucial for minimising false negatives (missing cases of OSA), and its specificity, which is essential for minimising false positives (incorrectly diagnosing OSA when the person does not have it).<\/p>\n
This varies from device to device<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re always in trade off,\u201d Bianchi says. \u201cWe know that when we favour specificity, that comes at a cost of sensitivity.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so we dial the knobs purposefully to reduce false positives … False positives can really compromise trust and flood the system.\u201d<\/p>\n In a clinical validation study<\/a> of more than 4500 adults across more than 11,000 nights, Apple demonstrated a sensitivity of 66.3 per cent and specificity of 98.5 per cent (the Samsung Galaxy Watch\u2019s sleep apnoea feature has demonstrated<\/a> a sensitivity of 82.7 per cent and a specificity of 87.7 per cent).<\/p>\n Early detection may improve treatment outcomes. Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n What\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n Neither the Apple Watch tests, nor the Samsung tests (or any other at-home device) replace a formal diagnosis. So why use them?<\/p>\n Not everyone with OSA has the classic symptoms, such as daytime sleepiness and snoring<\/a>. And given we normalise fatigue, they may not realise it\u2019s an issue.<\/p>\n![\"Early](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/e8d71625ba7c9df4f0938a433f1f9058c9aada38.jpeg\")
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