The FDA just approved an Apple Watch app to track Parkinson’s disease

By Cristina Alexander Published June 13, 2022

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green light to an Apple Watch app to monitor Parkinson’s disease, developed by San Francisco-based startup Rune Labs. As reported by Reuters, the Apple Watch’s pre-existing sensors can already detect falls, tremors, and other movement disorders consistent with symptoms of Parkinson’s. But Rune Labs has taken things a step further with its app, gathering individual data on the symptoms patients experience so that it can be shared with doctors to determine the best course of treatment.

Brian Pepin, CEO of Rune Labs, said that the data Apple Watch gathers through its Parkinson’s monitoring app will be combined with data from other sources, like brain implants. He also added that the app uses Rune Labs’ StrivePD software to send doctors continuous streams of data to give more context to movement patterns. This provides more data than doctors would get from observing a patient coming in for a short clinical visit, as symptoms of Parkinson’s disease change over time.

App menu on the Apple Watch Series 7. — Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

“When you think about the process of getting someone to their optimal therapy or combination of drugs or devices, or even whether or not a patient might be a good fit for a certain clinical trial, it’s a very hard decision to make when you only have a little context,” Pepin said.

Recommended Videos

Developers have been testing the Apple Watch’s monitoring of Parkinson’s disease ever since Apple introduced its ResearchKit framework in 2015. Originally, this allowed the Apple Watch to track users’ walking gait by prompting them to walk 20 steps every which way. Three years later, Apple updated ResearchKit with the Movement Disorder API, which can detect two common symptoms of Parkinson’s: tremors and dyskinesia, a side-effect of Parkinson’s medications that causes fidgeting and swaying motions.

The Parkinson’s monitoring app is the second Apple Watch software to receive FDA clearance after the agency cleared AFib History for use in watchOS 9 following its WWDC presentation last week. This feature tells users diagnosed with atrial fibrillation how frequently their heart rhythm shows signs of AFib, which, if left untreated, can cause a stroke and other cardiovascular complications.

Cristina Alexander

Gaming/Mobile Writer

Cristina Alexander is a gaming and mobile writer at Digital Trends. She blends fair coverage of games industry topics that…

Topics

Wearables

The wearable on your wrist can predict blood pressure crisis events days in advance

A hypertensive crisis can lead to acute organ damage, and the abrupt spikes in blood pressure are also linked to stroke, kidney damage, fluid backup in the lungs, and heart attack. Research says wearable devices can provide a warning 3 days in advance.

Huawei Watch D3 Blood Pressure (6)

In the domain of wearable devices, we have reached a stage where they are available in a variety of form factors. You can go with a smartwatch, something a little more subtle like a smart band without a screen, or even a smart ring. And as the form factors have continued to evolve, so have the capabilities and the sensing hardware. What started with basic light-based heart rate tracking has now reached a stage where smartwatches are capable of tracking multiple metrics, such as taking electrocardiogram readings, tracking sleep, looking for signs of sleep apnea, or even detecting spikes in blood pressure levels.

Now, fresh research courtesy of the American Heart Association claims that these mass-market wearable devices can help predict episodes of dangerously high blood pressure, or hypertensive crisis, up to three days in advance. The research was conducted over a period of 12 months and involved more than 4,000 participants living with stage 2 high blood pressure.

Wearables

Wear OS is borrowing your phone’s status bar so you never lose track of time

Your smartwatch is finally getting the one thing it was weirdly missing.

The Pixel Watch on a person's wrist.

If you have ever opened an app on your Wear OS smartwatch and had no idea what time it was, Google is working on a fix. In October, the company launched a Wear OS canary emulator inside Android Studio. It lets developers try out new features and design tweaks well before Google ships them to anyone’s wrist.

The biggest addition in this build is a status bar that never leaves. It lives at the top edge of your round watch face, floats above whatever app you have open, and keeps the clock and your watch’s status icons in view.

Wearables

Samsung’s first AI glasses could arrive in December, but only in two countries

Samsung's Gemini-powered glasses might be arriving a little later than expected, and most countries will have to wait even longer.

Samsung AI Glasses

Samsung's first AI-powered smart glasses are finally getting closer to store shelves. According to a new report from South Korea's ChosunBiz, the company is planning to launch its Intelligent Eyewear in mid-December, and if you're waiting to get your hands on them outside the US or South Korea, you might be disappointed.

For those catching up, we reported earlier in October that Samsung was planning a November launch. However, the latest report suggests the release has been pushed back by a few weeks. Samsung hasn't officially confirmed the new date, and there's still no word on how much the glasses will cost.