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What If Your Watch Says You Have Atrial Fibrillation?
We’re in a new world where medical problems can be detected without human intervention
A 77-year-old man with some cholesterol issues, but otherwise healthy, feels a fluttering sensation in his chest, along with some shortness of breath. It’s disquieting, but not painful. It persists for an hour or so and then seems to go away on its own. The next day it happens again, and his wife finally convinces him to call his doctor. He goes into the office, where a 12-lead EKG is placed and the diagnosis made clear — atrial fibrillation (Afib) — the most common arrhythmia in the world.
That is how Afib used to be diagnosed. A symptom, a doctor’s visit, an EKG. It is data from people diagnosed in that way that gave us all our guidelines about how to treat afib — rate control with beta-blockers, anti-coagulants and so on.
But that’s not really how Afib is getting diagnosed anymore.
Now… that whole process is boiled down to this: a smartwatch notification.
Whether we realize it or not, we are in a whole new world of medical diagnosis. The…
