Your Apple Watch could measure your potassium levels in a non-invasive way

By David12p - March 12, 2018
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AliverCor, a company associated with the renowned Mayo Clinic and embarked on the design of an EKG strap (dubbed KardiaBand) for the Apple Watch has presented a new study that combines artificial intelligence technology with this strap to generate a non-invasive system to determine the levels of potassium in blood, a basic point when diagnosing heart diseases that require rapid medical assistance.

Soon the Apple Watch is essential for our health

To carry out this study, 2 million electrocardiograms were taken from the Mayo Clinic from 1994 to 2017, paired with four million blood potassium values, added to the data of an AliveCor EKG device synchronized to a smartphone. With all these data we try to get the logarithm to achieve blood potassium levels with an accuracy of between 91 and 94%.

This is a revolution in the field of medicine, so far if a doctor wants to check potassium levels he must have performed a blood draw and send it to the laboratory. With this system you can have a very reliable way of knowing the result without having to perform a blood draw and without waiting for the results.

Suffering from hyperkalemia can be really serious and more so if it is associated with problems in the electrocardiogram, which can cause arrhythmia problems, something that is quite fatal if not treated quickly. Potassium itself is an indicator of kidney function.

Now the user with the KardiaBlue can detect himself if he suffers from hyperkalemia in his own home, knowing that he has to go quickly to a medical center to be treated.

If technology continues to advance in this way alongside medicine, the early detection of certain diseases increases significantly, which will lead to a reduction in patient mortality.

We must wait a bit with us AliveCor in the future, or other companies.