He told me it was a lot less expensive than the Zio patch or Holter monitor and good enough to use to see if my SVT gets worse. When I had to wear those devices for 3 weeks (first the Holter monitor, then they switched to the Zio patch because it was more discreet) it was like, $1,500 I had to pay. The watch was only $300 and I can show him at my appointments. The watch could not diagnose me, and I have no idea what I’m looking for, but it seems to be worth it.

My ER doctor friend likes them: she’d rather have a false positive than someone missing out on treatment but more often than not, it’s been something actionable.

> Supposedly because it has a lot of false positives sending people to the doctor that don't have any issues.

Worse than that, it shows an actual issue of sorts, but puts the doctor in a position for whether treatment should be done or not, because the patient may be better off with no treatment, because they are young and otherwise healthy.

The patient ends up demanding treatment (surgery) and ends up with a worse quality of life than before, or in very unfortunate cases, end up dying from complications.

What the watch is really doing, is gather a lot of data from mostly healthy, younger people, that don't suffer heart issues that require treatment, i.e. people that such data is normally not gathered data from, because they never needed to.

I don't think we can see the true benefit of the watch until 25 years from now, when we can start mapping out how the heart and cardiovascular system deteriorates as you age and what causes increased deterioration.

It’s not a unique technology, but the main age group a cardiologist sees aren’t going to be the most tech savvy people.

I work in mobile phones, and Apple phones are by far the easiest to set up and use without fear of messing something up super terribly. The app for the watch and the health app come preinstalled on iPhones so you do not need to explain how to log in/make an Apple ID, go to the App Store, and download another app for the watch to work.

I can’t tell you how many people I help set up their hearing aids, FitBits, Garmins, and even the car radio Bluetooth. I can imagine the doctor was probably getting the same, and that isn’t his job. The Apple Watches are probably the easiest for him and his patients to use and understand without much set-up. I know it’s the easiest thing for me to set up since there’s barely anything to do other than pair them.

I barely had to do anything for the watch to take my SPO2, heart rate, and respirations per minute. It just does. I had a Samsung phone and watch before the recommendation and it would always fight with me on doing these things. It was time for a phone upgrade anyway and my Samsung watch battery was going.

He could also be sponsored, which I hope he’s getting a nice kickback if that’s the case. It worked on me, lol.