{"id":305230,"date":"2025-11-25T04:58:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T04:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305230\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T04:58:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T04:58:17","slug":"smartwatches-can-detect-a-fib-are-they-accurate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/305230\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartwatches can detect A-fib. Are they accurate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mario Aguilar covers technology in health care, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, wearable devices, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. His stories explore how tech is changing the practice of health care and the business and policy challenges to realizing tech\u2019s promise. He\u2019s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter<\/a>. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re reading the web edition of STAT\u2019s Health Tech newsletter, our guide to how technology is transforming the life sciences.\u00a0Sign up to get it<\/a>\u00a0delivered in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n

Seven years after Apple released a smartwatch feature that can detect possible atrial fibrillation\u00a0in users, similar technology has become commonplace on a range of wearables. A new meta-analysis<\/a> of 26 studies of\u00a0devices that detect the arrhythmia concludes that the watches \u201cpossess excellent diagnostic accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Indeed, in the figure above you can see that most of the devices included in the review correctly identify people who do and don\u2019t have A-fib a high percentage of the time. An ongoing concern about detection algorithms built into widely used consumer devices is the false positive rate \u2014 or people incorrectly told they may have\u00a0a condition. Even a low rate magnified over millions of devices could mean headaches for your local cardiologist.<\/p>\n

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