Apple launches 3 new health studies with Apple Watch

Apple isn’t claiming outright that the Apple Watch saves lives. In a new promotional video that Apple played on stage at its hardware debut event at Cupertino, it let users do that for them.

“Hearing these stories really makes my heart sing,” Cook said.

But to bolster credibility for their claim that the Apple Watch is “the ultimate guardian for your health,” Apple announced that it was launching three new health studies, in conjunction with reputable medical institutions, to assess issues around hearing, women’s reproductive health, and heart health. 

What’s more, Apple wants its customers, i.e. people who wear Apple Watches, to be the study’s participants. All you have to do to participate is download a new app: Apple Research. 

A main criticism of wearables, and health tech more generally, is that they approach health problems with technological solutions that haven’t been vetted by experts and with features that may not be wanted or recommended by doctors. Apple is attempting to directly answer the former criticism by undertaking studies with institutions like the American Heart Association and the National Institute of Health. 

These aren’t Apple’s first forays into medical research. The company released the results of its first study assessing the Apple Watch last March. That study found that the Apple Watch’s ability to detect an irregular heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation) was accurate 84 percent of the time. However, analysis from a doctor from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in STAT cast doubt on whether the atrial fibrillation detection is accurate for wearers under age 55 (which is most of them). As recently as April of this year, Harvard Medical School does not recommend wearables to screen for atrial fibrillation.

So while the expert jury is still out on whether routine heart monitoring in otherwise healthy people with an Apple Watch is a good idea, Apple lets its promotional videos, filled with anecdotes about the feature, say it anyway. As the Apple Heart Study demonstrates, not conflating the fact that Apple simply did a study, with what the study actually proved, will be crucial in assessing the importance of these new studies (and usefulness of the Apple Watch) in the future.

The studies take advantage of Apple’s three newest health-related features. At this time, they are all light on details about exactly what data Apple will be collecting, and the specific research questions.

One study will be the Apple Hearing study, conducted with the University of Michigan. At WWDC in June, Apple launched “decibel monitoring” as a function on watchOS 6. This feature alerts wearers when they’re somewhere that’s too dang loud. The study will use this feature to “understand how everyday sound exposure can impact hearing.” Ambient noise studies usually involve putting sound meters in different locations, so it seems reasonable to infer that location-tracking would also be involved in this study. 

Notably, Apple will be studying the effects of ambient noise and not the potential for hearing loss caused by listening to music too loud from headphones that provide little-to-no noise cancellation. You may know those as earbuds and AirPods.

Next, the Apple Women’s Health Study will assess how menstrual-cycle monitoring can interact with infertility and osteoporosis diagnostics. In June, over four years after the initial launch of the Apple Watch, the company added the Cycle Tracking app, which finally allowed users to track menstrual cycles. Apple will conduct the study “in partnership with” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). It’s unclear as of yet what other information would be needed from users to make this study successful, and how the Apple Watch itself is germane to the issue, since menstrual data would likely need to be entered by the user. A fertility-tracking app DOT undertook a study that showed it was a successful method of pregnancy prevention, but that doesn’t appear to be the aim of the Apple study.

Finally, the Apple Heart and Movement Study will attempt to discern the correlation between heart rate/movement and hospitalizations. It’s working with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the American Heart Association on this one.

Scientific evidence for health tech products is welcome in a field that often casts aside the best practices of the medical system. Still, there’s something that feels a bit… icky…  about deploying scientific studies to prove the viability of a commercial product. Of course, this is something health companies and pharmaceuticals do all the time. But Apple’s lofty claims that participating in Apple Research will contribute to, like, the good of humanity, seem a bit convenient. 

Apple, of course, is funding the studies.