The Apple Watch is touted as being a lifestyle product. It is also marketed as a fitness product where thanks to its built-in sensors, it will be able to capture all sorts of information about you, like your heart rate, how far you’ve run, how fast you’ve run, calories burnt, and all that jazz. Now thanks to those biometrics, it could have potentially saved this man’s life.Ken Robson is 64-years old and is from Virginia and was planning a trip to visit his son. However leading up to the trip, Robson discovered that he was feeling weak and lightheaded and thanks to his Apple Watch, he noticed his heart rate was dropping to dangerously low levels of 30-40, resting heart rates which are usually reserved for Olympic athletes.
He then took himself to the emergency room where he informed the doctors that he suspected he might have a heart arrhythmia called sick sinus syndrome, and thanks to the fact that his Apple Watch had been collecting data on his heart rate for the past two weeks, the doctors could proceed with an operation almost immediately and equipped him with a pacemaker.
Had his heart rate not been collected by the Apple Watch (or any other similar device), the doctors would have made him wear a heart monitor for an extra week before giving him the operation, and who knows what could have happened in between then. According to Robson, “I think it’s slightly overstating it that it saved my life. I would say it vastly improved my life much quicker than it would have otherwise.”
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