Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Keep on wearing that Fitbit: Data collected from a man’s Fitbit might have saved his life

By Christian de Looper Published April 8, 2016

Fitness trackers like the Fitbit are great for reaching personal fitness goals and monitoring progress, but the technology inside of them has the potential to do a lot more than that — it could one day save your life.

A 42-year-old man from New Jersey was recently rushed to the hospital after suffering a seizure, where doctors found that the man had an irregular and fast heartbeat. Only problem was, they weren’t sure if this was a chronic condition or something he was experiencing due to the seizure.

Recommended Videos

That’s when the doctors treating him noticed he was wearing a Fitbit Charge HR. Normally doctors wouldn’t have information about what the patient was experiencing immediately before a seizure, but the Fitbit helped eliminate a lot of those unknowns. Using the data, doctors detected that the man had in fact been experiencing the irregular heartbeat leading up to the seizure, after which they decided to perform an electrocardioversion to help return the heart to its normal heartbeat.

“Using the patient’s activity tracker — in this case, a Fitbit — we were able to pinpoint exactly when the patient’s normal heart rate of 70 jumped up to 190,” said Dr. Alfred Sacchetti from the Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, NJ, in a statement.

Related Offer: The latest from Fitbit, see the Alta here

This is the first documented case of doctors using a fitness tracker to help diagnose a patient, and it most likely will not be the last. Not all fitness trackers have heart rate monitors, but the vast majority of them do, and the feature could become key in treating heart-related medical issues. Sure, Fitbit’s aren’t technically classified as medical devices as the data they collect isn’t as accurate as a true medical device, but the information they and other fitness trackers provide could still be invaluable in helping save someone’s life.

The Fitbit has been used to detect a range of different changes in heart rate — recently a woman found out she was pregnant after seeing changes in her heart rate and Googling what could be causing them.

Christian de Looper

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

Topics

Wearables

Bluetooth’s biggest speed boost in years could finally make lossless wireless audio more accessible

Bluetooth audio may finally stop settling for good enough.

Anker Sleep 4 earbuds series earbuds

I keep wired headphones in my bag just for the moments when I actually care how a song sounds. That says a lot about how I feel about Bluetooth audio. Wireless trades sound quality for convenience, but Bluetooth might finally fix that.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has formally announced Bluetooth High Data Throughput (HDT). It is a new optional feature that lets Bluetooth carry far more data than before, which could translate into better wireless audio (via Bluetooth SIG).

Wearables

Apple Watch learned new hand gestures in just a minute. It’s the most exciting wearable research I’ve seen in years.

The broad idea behind TransfHAR is to have the smartwatch learn repetitive movements and then remember them, and subsequently take linked actions. Sounds like a dream for smart home automation, and a lot more!

Apple Watch Ultra 2 dual gesture example

Apple brought gesture support to its smartwatches not too long ago. The capabilities, however, are pretty limited. Right now, the smartwatch can only recognize a two-finger tap gesture and a wrist flick gesture. But it seems the smartwatch already has the right set of sensors to recognize and learn a much wider variety of hand gestures, and doing so wouldn’t require any monumental effort.

Researchers from Northwestern University and Carnegie Mellon University have developed a system called TransfHAR that uses the motion sensors inside the Apple Watch, the accelerometer and the gyroscope, to learn and identipfy activities based on the movement of your hands and wrist. Imagine your Apple Watch triggers an action by recognizing your hand motion, without any touch input or voice command. Yeah, that's the core premise here.

Wearables

Samsung brings upgraded sleep apnea detection to Galaxy Ring and Galaxy Watch

Sleep tight, because your Galaxy Ring is now watching your breathing.

Someone holding the Samsung Galaxy Ring.

Samsung has been steadily turning its wearables into health companions, and its latest update is a big one. The company’s upgraded Sleep Apnea feature has arrived on both Galaxy Watch and Galaxy Ring.

The rollout comes after the US FDA cleared the feature in July, and Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) gave it the green light as well. Samsung also gets bragging rights here, as it is the first company to bring sleep apnea risk detection to a smart ring.