New Study Finds That Apple Watch Can Detect Early Signs of Diabetes

[Maura]

9to5 Mac reports today that according to a new study from UC San Francisco, in partnership with digital health startup Cardiogram, heart-rate data provided by wearables such as Apple Watch can detect diabetes at an early stage.

The study, which involved over 14,000 Apple Watch and Android users, used neural network DeepHeart to analyse the data from the Cardiogram app, which was then able to discover 463 study participants who had diabetes that was previously undiagnosed.

Cardiogram’s co-founder Johnson Hsieh outlined exactly how this is possible:

“Your heart is connected with your pancreas via the autonomic nervous system. As people develop the early stages of diabetes, their pattern of heart rate variability shifts. In 2015, the Framingham Heart Study showed that high resting heart rate and low heart rate variability predicts who will develop diabetes over a 12-year period. In 2005, the ARIC study showed that heart rate variability declines faster in diabetics than non-diabetics over a 9-year period.”

The data accuracy rate was measured at 85%.

Brandon Ballinger, another Cardiogram co-founder, said that the company’s next move would be to incorporate DeepHeart into the Cardiogram app.

Source: Large-scale study shows Apple Watch & other wearables can detect early signs of diabetes