The Apple Watch on your wrist can serve as a vital medical monitoring tool in the right circumstances. According to MyHealthyApple and MacRumors, Apple-funded Stanford researchers determined that the Apple Watch can accurately measure the fragility (or rather, the distance covered in a six-minute walk) of patients with cardiovascular disease while at home. The use of a personal smartwatch was almost as good as a clinical trial, the Stanford study found.
Scientists collected the data using the Apple Watch Series 3 and a specially made VascTrac app, but third-party software is unlikely to be needed in the future. WatchOS 7 includes the six-minute walk test and other mobility data, and you can review your performance in the Health app on your iPhone (on the Browse Respiratory tab).
The findings suggest that Apple Watch and other smartwatches can save patients the trouble of going to the doctor to measure their functional capacity – they can simply walk around the house and enter if there are signs of trouble. This clearly helps Apple to continue launching its wristwatches as a health device, but it also points to a future where the technology you already have is sufficient to provide doctors with an abundance of useful information.