{"id":1704,"date":"2014-09-20T21:48:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-20T20:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2014-09-20T21:48:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T20:48:13","slug":"apple-watch-healthkit-the-meaning-of-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/2014\/09\/20\/apple-watch-healthkit-the-meaning-of-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Watch, HealthKit &#038; the meaning of normal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/1411246043.jpg\" title=\"watch that tells the time\" alt=\"Underwhelming as copy for a watch\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" width=\"600\" height=\"159\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A tiny thought about the Apple Watch and HealthKit. Long term, the flood of additional data on the general population&#8217;s state of health and range of daily behaviour will be of benefit.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is going to come with gauging exactly when we&#8217;ve reached that &#8216;long term&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Let me take an example. I have no medical qualifications, obviously, but my job does involve speaking to medical consultants more often than most. One, a neurosurgeon, told me that the model of what was normal for a brain in the general population has broadened considerably in the few years since MRI cranial scans became widespread. <\/p>\n<p>He described what happened when an MRI scanning machine arrived at a UK hospital where he was working. For calibration purposes, it needed a largish number of people without brain disorders to volunteer to be scanned. <\/p>\n<p>These turned out to be (a) bored members of the public or (b) medical students.<\/p>\n<p>All were healthy and normal. A statistically significant number turned out to have brain abnormalities, with the abnormalities more common in the medical students than in the general public.<\/p>\n<p>I anticipate the Apple Watch and HealthKit data to initially demonstrate a similar wider range of &#8216;normal&#8217; in human health matters than is currently recognised. <\/p>\n<p>But until then, doctors are going to have to dig themselves out from the mountains of data that will fall on them and the current models in order to have a chance to to assess what it actually means for the person in front of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The coming smartwatch data flood is going to pose a challenge for doctors to assess.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,652,653],"class_list":["post-1704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-patient"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}