Apple announces new sleep apnea and hearing health features

On Monday, Apple announced new innovative health features for its Apple Watch and AirPods Pro 2, targeting two widespread health concerns: sleep apnea and hearing loss. 

“At Apple, we believe that technology can help you live a healthier life, and we’re excited to enable incredible new health capabilities for serious conditions that affect billions of people around the world, while continuing to keep user data private,” said Sumbul Desai, M.D., Apple’s vice president of Health in the release. “With Apple Watch, we continue to offer our users the ability to uncover important health conditions with new sleep apnea notifications. And on AirPods Pro, powerful features put users’ hearing health front and center, bringing new ways to help test for and receive assistance for hearing loss.”

More than snores: Diagnosing sleep apnea

Sleep apnea, a condition affecting over 1 billion people worldwide, often goes undiagnosed despite its potential for serious health consequences. Apple Watch’s new sleep apnea notifications aim to change this by utilizing an innovative Breathing Disturbances metric.

The Apple Watch employs its accelerometer to detect minute wrist movements associated with disrupted breathing patterns during sleep. Over a 30-day period, the watch analyzes this data to identify consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea. If detected, users receive a notification, empowering them to discuss potential next steps with their 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 in the release. “This is a major step forward in improving public health.”

Hearing health features in AirPods Pro 2

Apple also showcased hearing health features for the AirPods Pro 2, designed to prevent hearing problems, alert those with potential hearing problems, and assist the hearing impaired.  

To create these features, Apple conducted a study alongside the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the World Health Organization. 

Prevention

The new Hearing Protection feature actively reduces loud, intermittent environmental noise while preserving the audio quality of what users are listening to. It’s like having a personal sound engineer constantly adjusting the audio mix to protect your ears without compromising the listening experience.

Awareness

Apple introduces a clinical-grade Hearing Test feature, allowing users to assess their hearing health in the comfort of their homes. This five-minute test provides an easy-to-understand summary of results, including an audiogram that can be shared with healthcare providers.

“Hearing health is a cornerstone of overall wellbeing. Protecting and preserving our hearing enhances our quality of life both in the short-term and long-term,” said Rick Neitzel, University of Michigan School of Public Health’s professor of Environmental Health Sciences and principal investigator of the Apple Hearing Study in the release. “I’m thrilled Apple is introducing important tools to support people’s hearing health. These tools will help people protect their ears from noise pollution, be aware of changes in their hearing over time, and have important conversations with their healthcare providers when they need additional support.”

Assistance

Perhaps most revolutionary is the over-the-counter Hearing Aid feature. AirPods Pro 2 can transform into a clinical-grade hearing aid for users with mild to moderate hearing loss, tailored to their hearing profile from the Hearing Test. This innovation could dramatically increase access to hearing assistance, addressing a significant gap in care – the Apple Hearing Study revealed that 75% of people diagnosed with hearing loss haven’t received the medical assistance they need.

The Hearing Aid feature can also be adjusted with an audiogram from their clinician if they prefer. 

The same technology is being applied to improve call quality. Has background noise ever taken over a call? With the Media Assist feature, users can turn down certain sound frequencies, like a wind or noise at a cafe, to have crisp, clear sound on a call. 

Expanding the Apple Health ecosystem

The company also announced a new Vitals app for Apple Watch, additional pregnancy-related features in the Health app, and the ability to log journaling time as mindful minutes.

As wearable devices become increasingly sophisticated in their ability to monitor and analyze our health, we’re entering an era where technology could serve as an early warning system for a wide range of health conditions. Apple’s latest features – like so many other consumer goods companies stepping into healthcare – potentially democratize access to important health insights.

However, as these technologies become more integrated into our daily lives, important questions arise: How will the healthcare system adapt to incorporate this wealth of personal health data? And as our devices become more intimately connected to our health, how will we balance the benefits of continuous monitoring with the need for privacy and occasional disconnection?