Latest news with #MattBianchi
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
You can now do a sleep apnoea test using your watch. Is it worth it?
If you've ever been unlucky enough to have a sleep apnoea test, you'll appreciate how challenging it is to get a decent night's sleep while hooked up to an array of contraptions and wires. You also might understand why up to 90 per cent of the 1 billion-odd people believed to have sleep apnoea go undiagnosed. Apart from potential cost and access issues, fatigue is so common we've normalised it – we live in the era of 'The Great Exhaustion', according to author and computer science professor Cal Newport. Besides, who wants another disturbed night's sleep for a test when they already feel dog-tired? Enter the growing number of wearables offering a minimally disruptive sleep apnoea test in the comfort of your own bed. But how does a device on your wrist detect obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), in which throat muscles intermittently collapse and block the airway during sleep, causing a person's breathing to stop and start? How accurate are they? And, if they don't replace a formal diagnosis, what's the point? Last week, Apple announced the Australian release of its sleep apnoea feature, available on Apple Watch Series 9 and above and Apple Watch Ultra 2. In August, Samsung's sleep apnoea feature on the Galaxy Watch will become available in Australia. While other devices, such as Whoop, Oura, Garmin and FitBit, have sleep health features that can alert the wearer to disrupted sleep patterns, they do not have specific Therapeutic Goods Administration-approved features to detect breathing disturbances and therefore sleep apnoea. So how does it work? Dr Matt Bianchi, formerly an assistant professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School, is now a research scientist at Apple.
The Age
3 hours ago
- Health
- The Age
You can now do a sleep apnoea test using your watch. Is it worth it?
If you've ever been unlucky enough to have a sleep apnoea test, you'll appreciate how challenging it is to get a decent night's sleep while hooked up to an array of contraptions and wires. You also might understand why up to 90 per cent of the 1 billion-odd people believed to have sleep apnoea go undiagnosed. Apart from potential cost and access issues, fatigue is so common we've normalised it – we live in the era of 'The Great Exhaustion', according to author and computer science professor Cal Newport. Besides, who wants another disturbed night's sleep for a test when they already feel dog-tired? Enter the growing number of wearables offering a minimally disruptive sleep apnoea test in the comfort of your own bed. But how does a device on your wrist detect obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), in which throat muscles intermittently collapse and block the airway during sleep, causing a person's breathing to stop and start? How accurate are they? And, if they don't replace a formal diagnosis, what's the point? Last week, Apple announced the Australian release of its sleep apnoea feature, available on Apple Watch Series 9 and above and Apple Watch Ultra 2. In August, Samsung's sleep apnoea feature on the Galaxy Watch will become available in Australia. While other devices, such as Whoop, Oura, Garmin and FitBit, have sleep health features that can alert the wearer to disrupted sleep patterns, they do not have specific Therapeutic Goods Administration-approved features to detect breathing disturbances and therefore sleep apnoea. So how does it work? Dr Matt Bianchi, formerly an assistant professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School, is now a research scientist at Apple.
9 News
15-07-2025
- Health
- 9 News
Sleep apnea detection comes to Apple Watch for Australians
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here Your smartwatch is getting smarter with Apple today enabling sleep apnea notifications as part of their Sleep Tracking feature on compatible Apple Watches. Approved by Australia's health regulator the TGA, the Apple Watch is able to monitor disturbances during the night to give notifications to the wearer of a potential sleep apnea diagnosis. Sleep apnea is a huge health problem that can lead to high blood pressure, fatigue, type 2 diabetes, strokes, heart attacks and even a shortened lifespan, and, as Dr Matt Bianchi, research scientist at Apple told 9News, most people who have it simply do not know. Your smartwatch is getting smarter with Apple today enabling sleep apnea notifications. (Apple) "We're talking about a billion people worldwide with this condition, but 80 per cent of those individuals don't have a diagnosis currently, they are not aware they have it," he said. Critically, Bianchi explains, sleep apnea can be treated. "This is a treatable disorder, so the chance for us at that scale worldwide to chip away at that 80 per cent undiagnosed problem is the motivating factor for us." There are already products on the market that can detect sleep apnea, like the Withings Sleep Analyser which lays under the mattress and detects movement and sound, while other smart watches like the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 will also feature sleep apnea detection when available. The Apple Watch is the first smartwatch on the market in Australia with this feature. It works by detecting movement. In fact, as Bianchi told 9News, your watch is able to feel every breath you take. "The accelerometer sensor on the Apple Watch is a motion detector, but is very, very sensitive, even those small motions of breathing that you make while you sleep can be seen at the wrist by the accelerometer and that's how we detect interruptions in breathing at the watch." Sleep apnea detection will be available on the most recent models of Apple Watch, the Series 9 and 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, and is available today through a software update. Apple Technology Sleep World health CONTACT US
