Apple has been on the forefront of cardio tech since it rolled out the Apple Watch close to a decade ago. Many of the company’s innovations, such as atrial fibrillation detection and irregular heart-beat detection features have proven to be life saving.
Related:
- Apple Watch, iPhone used to monitor military servicemembers’ well-being
- Here are all the sensors on your Apple Watch — and what they do
- Apple Watch plays a pivotal role for people undergoing heart valve surgeries
New Machine learning research initiative at Apple now shows that they can also detect Heart Murmurs with great accuracy.
According to Apple’s research paper, their MTL model, multi task learning model (2dCNN-MTL) achieves accuracy over 95% in murmur detection, surpassing existing models, while maintaining an MAE of 1.636bpm in heart rate estimation, satisfying the requirements stated by Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI).
According to Cleveland Clinic, Heart murmurs are common and don’t necessarily indicate a health problem, especially in children. However, murmurs should be evaluated because they may signal a heart problem or other health issue.
Some heart murmurs, however, can indicate heart-related issues or other critical health issues. These include anemia, carcinoid syndrome, endocarditis, heart valve diseases, hyperthyroidism, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Today, your doctor listens to your heart with a stethoscope from different places on your chest and back to detect murmurs and prescribes either a chest x-ray, echocardiogram, and electrocardiogram.
Heart Murmur detection on the Apple Watch along with the existing ECG app and AFib detection will surely be another life-saving innovation.
