Apple Watch sleep, hearing health features
- September 16, 2024
- William Payne
Apple has unveiled sleep and hearing health features for Apple Watch and AirPods Pro 2. These new features will provide support for users with common sleep and hearing health conditions.
Apple Watch has adopted a new Breathing Disturbances metric to provide sleep apnoea notifications. The sleep apnoea notifications are expected to receive marketing authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other global health authorities soon. It will be available in more than 150 countries and regions, including the US, the EU, and Japan.
For more informed conversations with their healthcare providers, users can export a PDF that shows when sleep apnoea may have occurred, three months of breathing disturbance data, and additional information. Educational articles are also available within the Health app to help users learn more about sleep apnoea.
The sleep apnoea notification algorithm was developed using machine learning and a data set of clinical-grade sleep apnoea tests. The feature was validated in a clinical study. In the clinical validation study, every participant identified by the algorithm had at least mild sleep apnoea.
Apple is also providing AirPods Pro with active Hearing Protection, a clinically validated Hearing Test feature, and an over-the-counter Hearing Aid feature. The company claims this is a world-first in providing all-in-one aural health.
The software-based Hearing Aid feature is designed to help make access to hearing assistance easier at an approachable price point. The Hearing Test and Hearing Aid features are expected to receive marketing authorization from global health authorities soon.
The ear tips help to provide passive noise reduction, while the H2 chip helps to actively reduce louder, more intermittent noise at 48,000 times per second. On by default across all listening modes, Hearing Protection is helpful in a variety of loud settings.
Apple has also introduced a clinical-grade hearing test based on the standard clinical approach called pure-tone audiometry that users can take themselves with their AirPods Pro and a compatible iPhone or iPad. Users can take the test in about five minutes in their own home. When a user completes the test, they will see an easy-to-understand summary of their results, including a number representing hearing loss in each ear, a classification, and recommendations. The results, which include an audiogram, are stored in the Health app and can be shared with a healthcare provider to have more informed conversations.
The Hearing Test builds on learnings from an Apple Hearing Study and was developed using large-scale, real-world data. The feature was then validated against the clinical gold standard of pure-tone audiometry.
“Empowering consumers everywhere to have the ability to reliably identify the presence of abnormal breathing patterns during sleep can help uncover a woefully under-diagnosed and serious medical condition such as sleep apnoea,” said Sairam Parthasarathy, M.D., University of Arizona Health Sciences Centre for Sleep, Circadian, and Neurosciences’s professor and director in Tucson, Arizona. “This is a major step forward in improving public health.”
“At Apple, we believe that technology can help you live a healthier life, and we’re excited to enable incredible new health capabilities for serious conditions that affect billions of people around the world, while continuing to keep user data private,” said Sumbul Desai, M.D., Apple’s vice president of Health. “With Apple Watch, we continue to offer our users the ability to uncover important health conditions with new sleep apnoea notifications. And on AirPods Pro, powerful features put users’ hearing health front and centre, bringing new ways to help test for and receive assistance for hearing loss.”