Wired.com posted an article this morning claiming:
THE NEW ECG APPLE WATCH COULD DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD
Frankly, their logic, which is that you don't need ECG because screening asymptomatic adults is not proven to be necessary, seems specious and I assert that the main goal of the article is to be click-bait. Still, I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of medical professionals.
I read it. Thanks.
He does sort of present both sides. He basically said what I did. But you have to imagine that the data is useless without someone to interpret it for you. My question is, what happens when PCPs and cardiologists get flooded with PDF EKGs and don't have time to read them all? And moreover, an EKG is only useful in the context it is presented in (for most cases).
It's hard to explain... a lot of EKGs that look bad, aren't. And a lot that seem "normal" get looked at more thoughtfully based on the story of the patient, and things are found.
It is also hard to explain that a lead 1 EKG gives ONLY reliable rhythm data. That's it. Without different vectors (basically different pictures from different angles), you can't see what is really happening.
I actually think that a companion device that is worn on the other wrist and supplies a constant lead 1 EKG would be much more useful, but for obvious reasons we don't have that right now (battery life).
So the point of the article is this: you have to be selective in the people you test for things. We don't test every patient for every cancer, because it is a waste of resources and causes patient anxiety. The truth is that if it were free and cost no money and the results were instant, and there were no false positives, we would. And we would catch more cancer. But the state of technology right now means all we would do is create a LOT of anxious patients with no problems, and cost millions of man hours and billions of dollars. That is his basic point.
That being said, I still think it is super cool. Because I love tech.