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All that data your fancy Apple Watch has been collecting could possibly save your life one day. According to a study from the Health startup Cardiogram and UCSF off-the-shelf wearables can accurately detect conditions like hypertension and sleep apnea. 

Those steps actually do matter.

Apple Watch

In the new study which was presented on Monday at the  American Heart Associations annual Scientific Sessions, they recruited 6,000 Cardiogram app users to participate in a UCSF Health eHeart Study.

Out of those 6,000 people, 2,230 of them were diagnosed with hypertension and 1,016 had sleep apnea. Here’s how they made it work, researchers taught a machine learning algorithm called DeepHeart data from 70%  participants who had both conditions and those who didn’t.

From there they tested the algorithm on the remaining 30% of participants. Amazingly it was able to accurately detect those with sleep apnea and accurately detect hypertension 82% of the time.  Based on that level of accuracy researchers concluded that it was high enough to use the results as the initial screening. A doctors diagnosis will still serve as a final say of course.

Here’s what senior study author Gregory Marcus, the director of clinical research for UCSF’s cardiology department said after the study in a statement to Gizmodo :

Simply marketing this as health tech is not sufficient. Companies should be working with clinical researchers to figure out unmet healthcare needs and what works for patients,

Apple Watch

There has always been a debate one whether wearable’s such as the Apple Watch is a necessary purchase to accompany your iPhone. With this news, it would prove that it is most indeed worth your money, your health is definitely important and it would seem they are on a path to constant health monitoring.

This comes after Fitbit’s announcement of bringing glucose monitoring to their Ionic Smartwatch. Looks these phones are going to be a very integral part of lives in the coming future.

With this news are you now inclined to purchase an Apple Watch or Fit Bit?

Photos: Apple