This mechanism can save a life
Towards the end of 2017, an American woman, Kacie Anderson, in her car was hit from behind by a drunk driver at a traffic light. Anderson relates that when the car was hit she was thrown forward hitting her face against the steering wheel first, then bounced off the headrest and finally back against the steering wheel and then crashed into the window.
Seeing only darker, the unfortunate American lady was unable to find her cell phone. At that point she realized that she still had her Apple Watch on her wrist which she used to activate the emergency SOS and call 911.
The lady was diagnosed with a major head injury, swelling of the brain, and trauma to the spine, while the young son who was with her in her car fortunately only found minor bruises.
All this resulted in an initial loss of consciousness and loss of sight.
Ms. Anderson is assumed to have invoked emergency SOS by holding down the Apple Watch side button for at least six seconds, which either directly activates emergency services on an Apple Watch Series 3 or contacts them via the iPhone connected to it. .
In such a situation, the automatic assistance mechanism of the SOS allowed the victim of an accident to call for help even when she was unable to find her mobile phone.
Preventive Medicine
Recent news reports another case in which eHealth was able to help save a life. A 28-year-old American, James Green, tweeted that he never thought his “stupid wrist computer” would save his life.
Health to Save Lives: SOS
- Mr. Green used an Apple Watch application called HeartWatch to constantly monitor his heart rate. The app warned him that his heart rate had become excessively high and therefore he promptly requested medical assistance.
- The Telegraph reports that pulmonary embolism diagnosed in Mr. Green through a CT scan would have been fatal if he had not promptly sought medical attention.
According to Mr. Green himself, the alert from the Apple Watch in addition to other suspicious symptoms prompted him to act immediately instead of ignoring his condition and simply attributing it to a transient panic attack.David Walsh, the creator of the life-saving app, explained that he was inspired by his father’s premature death at the age of 56 due to a sudden heart problem.
In fact, the app can constantly monitor the heartbeat at rest and if it rises above or falls below a predetermined (normal) threshold, the software generates an alarm.This case is so important that even Apple itself has added a whole host of heart monitoring capabilities starting with the watchOS 4 OS version.