Apple Unveils Groundbreaking Health Features for Apple Watch and AirPods Pro 2
Credit: Apple
During the 'It's Glowtime' event, Apple announced several updates, placing center stage on health-focused features of both Apple Watch and AirPods Pro 2, coining efforts to implement the company's goals in terms of users' wellness and health. These features involve sleep and hearing health-endangered by two major issues billions of people face every day around the world.
Now, the Apple Watch boasts new revolutionary health features in sleep apnea detection for a disorder affecting more than 1 billion people in the world. This feature involves the detection of wrist movements correlated with breathing irregularities during sleep using the watch's accelerometer, giving the user a metric displaying "Breathing Disturbances.". While this records data over a period of 30 days, the Apple Watch sends alerts to users on possible moderate to severe sleep apnea in order to further their diagnosis and treatment by their healthcare providers. The feature would further help in assessing general sleep quality that could be related to different factors like consumption of alcohol and sleeping position.
All of these can be viewed by users within the health features, including the ability to track it over one month, six months, or a year, and export it out as a PDF report for deep-dive discussions with health providers, rich in sleep apnea events and breathing disturbances. Machine learning has trained this feature, it was validated by a huge clinical study.
Alongside the enhancements in sleep health, Apple introduces a thorough hearing health experience with new features on prevention, awareness, and assistance. The "Hearing Protection" feature reduces exposure to loud noises in AirPods Pro to help prevent hearing damage. In AirPods Pro, active noise reduction of louder, intermittent ambient sounds is handled by the H2 chip, supported by passive noise reduction afforded by the ear tips. This feature remains active across all listening modes.
In addition, there is the introduction of a clinical-grade Hearing Test available through the AirPods Pro and with a compatible iPhone or iPad. This test will take about five minutes and will summarize the user's hearing health in a super-understandable format. With these innovative features, Apple is taking a giant leap forward in promoting overall health and wellness for its users.