Apple has unveiled groundbreaking health features for the Apple Watch and AirPods Pro 2, now available to users in Malaysia. These updates introduce sleep apnea detection and a comprehensive hearing health experience, aiming to provide users with proactive tools for managing & enhancing their daily well-being.
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Jodee Tan chevron_right
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Self-Diagnosis Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is a disorder that causes irregular breathing during sleep, capable of disturbing a good night's sleep and oxygen flow.
With an innovative new Breathing Disturbances metric, sleep apnea notifications are now available on the Apple Watch. It employs the watch's accelerometer to detect subtle wrist movements associated with interruptions in normal breathing patterns during sleep.
Wearing the Apple Watch, diagnosis will hold 30 days worth of recording, where the Apple Watch will analyse and notify users if consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea are detected, encouraging consultation with healthcare professionals.
To access, users can view nightly Breathing Disturbances data in the Health app, categorized as elevated or not elevated, and access historical data over various periods.
For convenience, the feature also includes the option to export a PDF report for informed discussions with healthcare providers.
“Empowering consumers everywhere to have the ability to reliably identify the presence of abnormal breathing patterns during sleep can help uncover a woefully underdiagnosed and serious medical condition such as sleep apnea,” said Sairam Parthasarathy, M.D., University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Sleep, Circadian, and Neurosciences’s professor and director in Tucson, Arizona.
Clinical-Grade Hearing Aid
Hearing tests are also now possible with the AirPods Pro 2.
Behind the study, it's been found that hearing loss often goes untreated. In fact, the Apple Hearing Study revealed that 75 percent of people diagnosed with hearing loss haven’t received the assistive support that they need.
This new update brings the assessment capability to AirPods Pro 2, of which the feature has been tested and clinically validated based off learnings from the Apple Hearing Study and was developed using large-scale, real-world data. The feature was then validated against the clinical gold standard of pure-tone audiometry.
With this, users can now assess their hearing in approximately five minutes using AirPods Pro 2 paired with a compatible iPhone or iPad. Rated clinical-grade, this over-the-counter hearing aid feature is designed to assist individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss.
In addition, the new update also provides real-time protection against loud environmental noises, automatically lowering the volume to safeguard users' hearing.
“For decades, Apple has led the way in designing products for everyone and supporting users with a broad spectrum of hearing abilities,” said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. “These features on AirPods Pro will make an impact on so many people by driving more awareness around hearing health and empowering individuals with new customisable tools to help them stay connected.”
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