Chasing Life Can Your Smart Watch Actually Help You Live Longer?
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Nov 7, 2025 Dr. Sumbul Desai, Vice President of Health at Apple and a clinical associate professor at Stanford Medicine, discusses the transformative potential of wearable technology for health. She shares insights on how devices like the Apple Watch can detect irregular heartbeats and hypertension, acting as 'intelligent guardians' for users. Desai highlights the significance of data integration with physicians and explains how innovations like AirPods are evolving into accessible hearing tools. Their conversation sheds light on the future of preventive healthcare.
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Wearables As Preventive Health Tools
- Wearables can shift healthcare from reactive 'fix' to proactive prevention by being with users constantly.
- Apple aims to nudge healthier behaviors and detect conditions early to lengthen healthy lifespans.
User Feedback Drove Health Features
- Heart rate sensing was added to improve activity metrics and unexpectedly revealed real health findings from users.
- User letters drove Apple to create high heart rate alerts, irregular rhythm notifications, and ECG features.
Screening Hypertension With Wrist PPG
- Apple used PPG wrist signals and machine learning on 100,000+ participants to screen for hypertension patterns.
- The screening notifies reliably (92% positive predictive value) but detects about 41% of true cases.