The Apple Watch has evolved into a watch capable of measuring many aspects of health, which has on countless occasions been successful in saving the lives of its owners. A new study from Stanford University has found that the small Apple watch is also able to detect “the state of fragility” of an adult user.
“Frailty is a physiological syndrome characterized by decreased reserves and reduced resistance to stressors, the result of a cumulative decline in physiological systems resulting in vulnerability to adverse health effects.
Frailty can be detected by a 6-minute walk test (6 MWT), capable of displaying a metric to assess a patient’s functional mobility and exercise capacity. The study found that an Apple Watch is able to accurately assess fragility with 90% sensitivity.
Apple Watch continues to demonstrate its potential
the The Stanford University study was conducted in collaboration with Apple, and this is not the first study from the famous university that reveals the potential of the Apple Watch. They recently revealed that the Apple Watch is able to detect early symptoms of COVID.
The study provided 110 cardiovascular disease patients an iPhone 7 and an Apple Watch Series 3. Patients underwent regular six-minute home walking tests, which were then compared to their standard clinic performance with the 6MWT test.
Apple Watches was able accurately assess fragility with a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 85% when the test is supervised in a clinical setting. When performed in an unattended environment at home, the Apple Watch was able to accurately assess fragility with a sensitivity of 83%.
“In this longitudinal observational study, passive activity data acquired by an iPhone and an Apple Watch was an accurate predictor of 6 MWT performance in the clinic. This finding suggests that frailty and functional capacity could be monitored and assessed remotely in patients with cardiovascular disease, allowing for safer and higher resolution patient monitoring.
The good thing about these studies is that Apple takes note and applies improvements to its devices. Although a specific app was created for the study to collect the data called “VascTrac”, with watchOS 7 Apple has included new metrics in the Health app that include the 6MWT test.
