I developed an iOS app which detects your sleeping position and starts buzzing if you’re on your back. Similar to the tennis-ball-sewn-into-pyjama’s hack. Apple kept refusing to approve stating medical reasons. Still use it myself though, works great.

I have sleep apnea and I have an implant to stop my apnea / snoring.

1. if your watch tells you that you might have apnea go get a sleep study! 2. apnea and snoring do tend to happen together but not necessarily. you can have apnea without snoring(sometimes the other way but not as common) 3. apnea is like high blood pressure it's slowly killing you. 4. there are a lot of options now to help you. one might be losing weight. one might be sleeping on a side or stomach.. you won't know until you do a sleep study! get it done.

After I got my apnea fixed I feel like a new person. I did not even know how tired I was or what being "awake" was like anymore. My body adjusted to a new normal. Please look into treatment!

I like the concept but I'm curious how it works. It sounds like it's based on detecting the movements of the wearer? Does that work?

It's a shame Apple is having patent issues with their SpO2 sensor. The O2Ring was a huge help in me understanding my sleep apnea early on, in combination with a formal sleep study. Sleep apnea is a very common and harmful problem, any sort of way of helping detect it will improve a lot of lives.

Such a shame that my 2 year old, ultra high end watch can't use this feature. Apparently Apple Ultra is too dated to have this functionality, what a joke.

The problem is that these at home tests aren’t good enough to eliminate the costly and time consuming and inconvenient step of a sleep study in the lab. At least near me, to get a CPAP you first do a take home study with a wrist based (watch like) recorder. Then they make you go into the lab for an overnight sleep study (or multiple of them) anyways, for a study that costs your insurance several thousand dollars per night (and you have some copay potentially) and it is of course a massive hassle and barrier to getting CPAP treatment. They claim it is so they know your air pressure numbers but it is all just regulatory capture, because CPAP machines can auto adjust your pressure and people like to tweak numbers manually to their comfort level anyways.

Can Apple do something about eliminating all these bureaucratic barriers that hurt the health of so many?

I have tried for months to use my APAP machine, and failed. My wife has no problems using her. I’m not really sure what the next step even is. It’s frustrating because I can tell when I get a bad nights sleep I can’t think as well, but it feels like there’s nothing I can do about it. I can breathe through the CPAP exclusively for hours but then as soon as I try to go to sleep I feel like I’m being smothered and my heart starts racing. Does anyone have any advice?

> The feature, announced at last week’s iPhone 16 event, will arrive as part of the imminent watchOS 11 release.

how exactly was Apple able to preannounce approval for this before the, yknow, approval?

like exactly no other agencies work this way, precommiting them to a decision they havent formally taken, even if informally it was already taken they would frown very strongly on leaking their stuff

I’ve always dealt with snoring and a take home test was inconclusive (so my doctors weren’t super pushy about me doing an in person test). I still worry a little and my dentist used their 3d head XRay to show me my airway is so slightly constricted and I will certainly have it one day if not now.

All to say I am elated to have my watch helping me just monitor and understand the issue and help give me more actionable data if I need to pursue the doctors again.

I just wish we could solve this with something other than needs-AC-plug machine. I’d like to be able to travel without needing to think about that

This is a great "free" feature in a wearable. I wonder how many years are left before Ozempic-like drugs make sleep apnea a rarity.

It going to be great fun as Apple and Google add more and more medical features and then when they ban your account you lose them all. Maybe this will be more of the door to break their control on mobile computing.

What does that approval mean for the rest of the world? Do they still need a new approval in Europe before adding the feature in the EU? And if so, is the feature geofenced? E.g., you lose it when traveling or how do they prevent Europeans and people living in markets that are pending approval from using it?

Main reason for sleep apnea - in my opinion - is deformed/degenerated fascia in the neck aka head forward posture. It's the disease of our modern (sedentary) age. SA is only one symptom. If you heard this the first time please feel free to ask. I'm always astounded at how common these CPAP devices are. Truly frightening.

Does this mean that you could be prescribed an Apple Watch if you were at risk of apnea? Or even use an HSA?

Can a more Apple-minded person help me understand if the Apple Watch SE counts as "Series 9"? I don't totally understand how "SE" relates to numerical versioning, but I am also not an Apple person.

Apologies in advance if this question is somehow obvious to others.

Will this work outside of US or does it need to get approved by other orgs, like whatever is EUs FDA?

I’ve completely stopped using my Apple Watch, but this is a tempting proposition. It looks like a one-off at-home sleep study is cheaper, but that doesn’t help me if the problem materializes a year after I get it.

In term of tracking sleep, is there any alternative with better battery life? I don’t mind other sport tracking functions.

this is pretty funny considering taking a nap w apple watch will completely break the health app sleep tracking for that day

Is any VC guy here that is interested in medical devices? I would have something for you.

This is groundbreaking

Reminder that sleep apnea is mostly caused by something hindering the normal airflow. It might require a jaw/orthognathic surgery or a nasal obstruction surgery, depending on the cause being a jaw or nasal dysmorphia + muscular rehabilitation

This could be great for detecting it early where most people don't get help soon enough.

Can't wait to get this in more devices.

Now we know why it's called Apple Watch.

It watches you.

Time to buy stock in the leading apnea machine manufacturers.

This is fantastic. Breaking into medicine would be amazing. Apple’s products are generally great. M

Why not Apple Watch 8?

Surely it’s not a technical reason, more a business one.

I would be interested in knowing whether these are effective at detecting sleep apnea in flight crews to aid aeromedical certification.

So on paper it sounds great, in practice this feature seems almost useless to me. As someone living in the garmin watch ecosystem, every time a new apple watch comes out, I quickly hit the specs page to see if they have made any progress at all on reasonable battery life and am continually let down.

With 36 hours being the absolute best-case scenario for battery life, it would seem your options are to either have two watches, or be perfectly fine only wearing your watch every other day? Otherwise, when do you charge?