Apple wants its various devices to be able to detect potential health problems as evidenced by a new patent filing for a “System and Method for Detecting Health Events.”
About the patent filing
It relates to detecting a likelihood that a user of a system is experiencing or is about to experience a health event such as a seizure or heart attach. In the patent filing Apple notes that some medical conditions can be aggravated by environmental factors, leading to such events. Health events can be characterized by a variety of symptoms.
The system described in Apple’s patent includes one or more electronic devices such as iPhones, AirPods, Apple Watches, and the Apple Vision Pro in communication with one or more sensors. The system uses the sensors to collect data including physiological data of the user of the system and/or environmental data about the physical environment of the system.
The system could use the data to calculate a likelihood that the user is experiencing a health event or is about to experience a health event. For example, the system calculates the likelihood of the user experiencing a seizure.
In another example, in response to calculating that the likelihood exceeds a predefined threshold, the system generates an alert. The alert includes causing the system to output a visual, audio, and/or tactile indication to the user and/or alerting a system used by another user, such as an emergency contact of the user, emergency services, and/or good Samaritans nearby.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “A system including one or more electronic devices calculates the likelihood of the user of the system experiencing a health event, such as a seizure. In some examples, the system collects data including environmental data and/or physiological data and uses the data to calculate the likelihood of the user of the system experiencing the health event. In some examples, in response to calculating that the likelihood of the user experiencing the health event exceeds a predetermined threshold, the system generates an alert.”
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