Just hours before the opening keynote of WWDC 2022, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Apple approval for a new health feature of the Apple Watch. According to the filings made available on Monday, Apple is working on a new Afib history feature for the Apple Watch.
As reported or My Healthy Apple, the FDA’s 510(k) approval allows the company to use the Apple Watch to keep track of the user’s atrial fibrillation history as part of the ECG app.
Currently, the ECG app can only detect atrial fibrillation (which is a type of cardiac arrhythmia) between 50 and 150 BPM. In some countries, the ECG app can only detect Afib between 50 and 120 BPM. However, with the new approval, Apple could add a new feature for even deeper analysis of atrial fibrillation.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently reported that watchOS 9 would get support for “Afib burden detection,” which is the ability to monitor how often a user is in a state of atrial fibrillation over a particular period. This process is usually based on data collected over a 14-day period.
It’s unclear whether the new atrial fibrillation history feature will be available as part of watchOS 9 later today or whether Apple will keep it for the next generation Apple Watch this fall.
