| I, like the average person here it seems, fail to see the issue here, but that aside, this is most likely not a large enough sample size[0] to be a highly trusted statistic. That said, let's look at this from a different perspective. > The Apple Watch abnormal pulse detection feature was designed to address asymptomatic (so-called silent) atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, affecting over 30 million people worldwide[0]. So, assuming there's 8 billion people in the world, this affects .375% of the population. Assuming this was a statistically significant study, that means that if everyone in the world had an apple watch, this would only let 300 million people know they potentially had an AFIB event. Now, an excess of 270 million might seem excessive--but I would weigh excessive with the burden this event puts on the medical community. The primary means of diagnoses for an AFIB event is an ECG[1], which costs $150 on Amazon. Assuming they don't have to buy an ECG for each individual, I would assume the cost to most health care clinics for diagnosis is around $100. However, this test 1. Does not have to be administered by anyone other than a nurse.
2. Only has to be administered once in a lifetime for a diagnosis. So now 10% doesn't seem that bad given that the burden is distributed to the global healthcare system over time. Keep in mind too, even if every single one of these people visited the ER, then this would be completely in line with the fact that only 10% of ER visits result in an admission[2] to the hospital. [0] https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/27/9/1359/5911974 [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/atrial-fibril... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm |