Artificial Intelligence in a Smartwatch for Atrial Fibrillation

An interesting study by Perez et al in NEJM found some very interesting things:

1. A large number of people opted-in to be part of the study (over 400K)
2. In about 4 months, about 0.5% participants were noted to have irregular heart rate – a relatively small percentage than one would expect.
3. Of the people who returned 7-day monitoring after being notified of irregular heart beat, about one-third had atrial fibrillation. This is a significant number of atrial fibrillation in otherwise asymptomatic individuals.

The study highlights several important things, some noted above. However, what it does not tell us if the use of smartwatch to identify atrial fibrillation in otherwise healthy people results in improved health outcomes or not. A future study should be able to evaluate this question. For now, at least we know we can depend on smartwatch to identify atrial fibrillation.