Apple is quietly revolutionising healthcare

The new Watch matters more than the new iPhones

Why? Because I can think of three groups of people who would be directly invested in getting one asap:

• The elderly
• People with epilepsy
• People with heart disease

For people in these groups (and that’s a lot of people) the Watch may well be such a lifesaver that price won’t be the major consideration. And it comes down to three new areas the Watch will provide data on: falls, atrial fibrillation, and ECG.

Falls in the elderly can mean fractures or even a stroke. In people with epilepsy falls can mean a seizure. Those are only two examples but they represent a large number of people. The Watch detects falls by tracking patterns of arm movement that can differentiate falling over from slipping up. When it detects a fall, it’ll deliver a hard fall alert which you can either dismiss or use to call emergency services. If you’re unresponsive up to a minute, it’ll automatically make the call and also message your emergency contacts.

The Watch also detects atrial fibrillations (AFib): the fast and irregular heartbeats experienced by over 30 million worldwide and which increase risk of strokes and heart attacks and dementia. I can see people with…