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Lower Life Insurance Premiums with the Apple Watch

Posted on September 20, 2018 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: John Hancock is offering lower life insurance premiums for people who use a wearable computer to track their health.

Insurance companies are in the business of making money and to do that, they need more people to pay in than they pay out. To avoid paying out claims in life insurance, John Hancock is turning to an “interactive life insurance” policy. That means if people exercise and track their health using a wearable computer like an Apple Watch, their life insurance premiums will be lower.

The goal is to keep people healthy as long as possible so John Hancock won’t have to pay out life insurance benefits. Yet that shows how the Apple Watch and other wearable computers are proving valuable as real-time health monitors. To encourage people to use a wearable computer, John Hancock offers it as at a discount. The company’s goal is purely monetary, but the benefits means Apple Watch and other wearable computer users can stay healthy and enjoy life longer as a result.

For anyone still confused about the purpose of the Apple Watch, think real-time health monitoring. If you’re concerned about staying healthy and alive, then you need an Apple Watch. For those critics who don’t care about staying healthy or alive, feel free to ignore the benefits of wearable computers and take yourself out of the gene pool prematurely.

The wearable computer market is the next hot market after the mobile market of smartphones and tablets. At Apple’s last event on September 12, the company introduced new iPhones but the Apple Watch stole the show. Eventually, more wearable computers such as smart glasses will steal the show too, and the iPhone will just become another commodity like the Macintosh.

The future shifted from traditional PCs to mobile computing, then to wearable computers. The Apple Watch is just the start of wearable computing with smart glasses promising to become the next big product. Hopefully if you use the Apple Watch, you can improve your chances of being alive long enough to see and use Apple’s next wearable computer in the next few years.

The Apple Watch as a Health Monitor

Posted on September 14, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: The latest Apple Watch offers electrocardiogram, which is new for a consumer product.

When the Apple Watch first appeared, people wondered why they would need one. After all, an iPhone worked just fine and the Apple Watch offered a much smaller screen. While the iPhone and iPad App Store had taken off in popularity, the App Store for the Apple Watch remains more or less stagnant. Most people don’t use an Apple Watch for anything but brief glances, so constant interactivity is fairly useless on an Apple Watch.

Yet the biggest strength of the Apple Watch is its ability to monitor health symptoms in real-time passively. Once you strap an Apple Watch on, it keeps recording your health data, which is why adding an electrocardiogram is a huge feature.

Users can put their finger on the digital crown as the Apple Watch passes a current across the chest to track electrical signals in the heart, directly, which is far more accurate than interpreting based on pulse. The process takes about 30 seconds and the user will receive a heart rhythm classification. Normal rhythms will be classified as “sinus” rhythm, and the Watch will also classify irregular rhythms, such as atrial fibrillation.

While this may not be as accurate as a dedicated machine, this feature in the Apple Watch can detect possible heart irregularities early. The early a problem is detected, the sooner the person can get medical attention, thereby saving lives. Previous versions of the Apple Watch have already saved numerous lives and now this latest feature can potentially save many more.

While young people have traditionally been the market for new technology, the Apple Watch is unique in that is targets older people. The newest Apple Watch can detect when a person falls and then contact emergency services automatically if the person doesn’t get up. This will likely cause many young people to buy one for their elderly parents. Now the real trick is getting these elderly people to wear the Apple Watch regularly.

The Apple Watch is mostly a self-contained unit, unlike the iPhone and iPad. The Apple Watch App Store will likely remain small compared to the iPhone and iPad App Store, but that’s because the products target two different uses. The iPhone and iPad is great for interaction on the go. The Apple Watch is far better for brief glances and constant health monitoring, which neither the iPhone or iPad can do easily.

As long as Apple continues pursuing health benefits with the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch has the potential to become a huge product that could dwarf the iPhone. Not everyone needs an iPhone, but everyone is concerned about their health, especially the elderly. Since the world is aging in many countries, the Apple Watch will continue growing as well. The future isn’t just mobile, but wearable computers, and the leader in wearables will be the Apple Watch.

Wearable Computers Used to Track Chronic Health Conditions

Posted on August 30, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical Leave a comment

What it is: Users track chronic health issues with wearable computers.

When Apple first released the Apple Watch, many people couldn’t see a need for one. Over time, Apple Watch users have found the best uses for their device and that involves real-time health tracking. Because a wearable computer can monitor a user’s health without the user’s constant interaction, the Apple Watch can easily monitor health symptoms and store this data for analysis.

Using data collected by the popular health app Cardiogram, researchers noticed that a vast majority of real-time health tracking isn’t just for improving health such as athletes might need, but for managing and tracking chronic health conditions. In other words, if you currently have a serious health condition, a wearable like the Apple Watch can help you monitor your condition so it doesn’t suddenly get worse.

For anyone still confused as to the purpose of the Apple Watch, they just need to protect their health. That’s a simple explanation for why someone might want an Apple Watch that anyone can understand. You might not need an Apple Watch to make phone calls (but it can be handy to have a phone strapped to your wrist, especially for the elderly who may fall down). You might not need an Apple Watch to play games, but you might want an Apple Watch to help you monitor your current health conditions so they don’t get worse.

Protecting your health and monitoring it in real-time is the main use for the Apple Watch. If you’re not interested in your health, then you probably don’t need anything else either from medicine and diagnosis machines to wearable computers like the Apple Watch. If you’re like most people who do care about your health, the Apple Watch can literally be a life saver.

Losing Weight with the Apple Watch

Posted on August 7, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: The Apple Watch can track your daily activities to help you lose weight.

Leif Johnson simply wants to lose weight. Like most people, losing weight can be easier if you have someone with you at all times to constantly remind you of your goals. However, unlike most people, Leif relies on the Apple Watch to help him lose weight.

The Apple Watch works for helping people lose weight for several reasons. First, as long as you attach it to your arm everyday, it can provide constant reminders of your daily activities such as calories burned, exercise, and whether you’re standing up at least once an hour. By tracking all this data passively while you go about your day, you can see periods of time when you might be inactive and when you have a chance to be more active.

The basic saying is that if you measure something, it’s more likely to get done. That’s why dieters count calories and weigh themselves because only by knowing where they’re at in relation to their goal can they make sure they continue working towards that goal. It’s not always fun or exciting to see days when you’re slacking off, but it is educational because it shows that you can’t do nothing and simply wish your excess weight away. You have to work at any goal, such as weight loss, everyday.

Besides providing constant reminders, the Apple Watch also can help you lose weight by providing regular notifications. Just displaying information passively may not be enough. Having the Apple Watch display your exercise or calories consumed goal at the end of the day can be a powerful motivator to get you to take consistent and regular action towards your goal.

The Apple Watch passively records your data and then actively reminds you when you’re falling short and when your’e reaching your goals. Through this combination, the Apple Watch can help you lose weight.

Naturally, the Apple Watch can do more but for many people, this aid to losing weight can be worth the price alone. Then anything else the Apple Watch does is simply a bonus.

Digital Health Records

Posted on June 19, 2018 by admin Posted in Medical, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Deloitte predicts digitally connected health treatment will be a normal part of healthcare within a decade.

Anyone remember the old days before the Internet when online services were the only reliable way to connect with other people? The trouble was that there were so many online services that they couldn’t connect with each other. That’s essentially the problem today with health records with everyone following different standards and no standards making it easy to share data with other standards.

The lack of standards means that data gets lost or ignored. Missing data means less than optimal knowledge about a patient, which could prove fatal. That’s why the medical world wants to move to a digital standard but with so many standards to choose from, there’s no compelling reason for any single standard to stand out. Until, of course, Apple appeared.

Given the popularity of the iPhone, Apple can help define a health record standard that makes it easy for people to securely store and share their medical data with medical personnel. with Apple’s focus on privacy and security, Apple’s health care standard offers compelling advantages that other standards lack. That means in the future, health records may get digitized and securely stored and shared with health care professionals.

The immediate problem with digital health records is security and privacy. Without proper security, hackers could invade people’s privacy. The punishment for stealing and revealing health records might not seem that important, but it’s essentially violating a personal part of a person. Although no security can be 100% effective, Apple’s iPhone is at least far more secure than Android. Yet to succeed, standard digital health records will need to be shared among all types of devices, which means less security and greater threats of privacy loss. Today’s lack of health care data standards dramatically increases privacy and security at the cost of updated information.

Ultimately the question is whether shared health records will be worth the risk of privacy loss. For some people, the answer will be yes but to others, the answer will be no. Although Deloitte predicts health care data will be digitized within a decade, don’t expect this process to arrive without lots of lost, stolen, and misinterpreted data. Digital health records aren’t perfect but they’re far more useful than today’s hodge-lodge system of storing and sharing medical information. The only question is whether the advantage of sharing data will be worth the price of privacy loss.

Monitoring Blood Pressure

Posted on June 8, 2018 by admin Posted in Hardware, Medical, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple recently patented a blood pressure measurement device.

Real-time health monitoring is the killer app for wearable computers like the Apple Watch. In their latest push towards monitoring health, apple recently patented a blood pressure measurement device that looks suspiciously like an accessory for the Apple Watch.

Right now the Apple Watch comes with a limited number of built-in sensors, but Apple can’t add too many more sensors for two reasons. First, there’s not enough physical space on an Apple Watch. Second, the government needs to regulate medical devices, which risks slowing down innovation so they can test each product and approve it. The end result is that Apple can only put general purpose health sensors on the Apple Watch, which means any additional sensors, such as a blood pressure measurement device, will likely come from smart bands.

Right now, the Apple Watch can wrap around your wrist using a variety of bands, but all of them serve no other purpose than to keep the Apple Watch on your arm. Make that band smart by adding sensors and suddenly you’ve expanded the capability of the Apple Watch and customized it for specific types of uses. One person might be interested in monitoring their blood pressure while another might be interested in measuring their glucose levels. That would mean offering different types of smart bands for different users.

The Apple Watch won’t just be a toy but a real-time health monitoring tool designed to track your health symptoms every second. This can provide you with health data or other people such as doctors or researchers. Researchers might be interested in tracking your data to study while doctors may be interested in tracking your data to help keep you in optimum health.

Ultimately, the Apple Watch will be a real-time health monitor. As its value becomes clear to everyone, there won’t be a reason not to own an Apple Watch, unless, of course, you don’t care about your health any more.