Apple introduces groundbreaking health features to support conditions impacting billions of people

September 09, 2024 at 14:41 PM EDT

Apple Watch delivers new sleep apnea notifications, and AirPods Pro 2 provide the world’s first all-in-one hearing health experience including a clinical-grade, over-the-counter Hearing Aid feature

Apple® today unveiled breakthrough sleep and hearing health features coming to Apple Watch® and AirPods Pro® 2 that further deliver on Apple’s commitment to health with experiences that enrich users’ lives. These new features expand across products, bringing informative and powerful ways to support users in their sleep and hearing health for conditions that impact billions globally.

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Apple introduces groundbreaking new features across sleep and hearing health. (Photo: Business Wire)

Using an innovative new Breathing Disturbances metric, sleep apnea notifications come to Apple Watch, adding to the many ways Apple Watch acts as an intelligent guardian for users’ health. The sleep apnea notifications are expected to receive marketing authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other global health authorities soon, with availability this month in more than 150 countries and regions, including the U.S., the EU, and Japan.¹

Apple is providing the world’s first all-in-one hearing health experience with AirPods Pro with active Hearing Protection², a clinically validated Hearing Test feature, and an over-the-counter Hearing Aid feature. The first-of-its-kind software-based Hearing Aid feature helps make access to hearing assistance easier than ever at an approachable price point. The Hearing Test and Hearing Aid features are expected to receive marketing authorization from global health authorities soon, and will be available this fall in more than 100 countries and regions, including the U.S., Germany, and Japan.³

“At Apple, we believe that technology can help you live a healthier life, and we’re excited to enable incredible new health capabilities for serious conditions that affect billions of people around the world, while continuing to keep user data private,” said Sumbul Desai, M.D., Apple’s vice president of Health. “With Apple Watch, we continue to offer our users the ability to uncover important health conditions with new sleep apnea notifications. And on AirPods Pro, powerful features put users’ hearing health front and center, bringing new ways to help test for and receive assistance for hearing loss.”

A Powerful Way to Detect Signs of Sleep Apnea

Sleep is an important area of health as it impacts a person’s overall physical and mental wellbeing. Sleep apnea is a prevalent disorder in which breathing momentarily stops during sleep, preventing the body from getting enough oxygen. The condition is estimated to impact more than 1 billion people worldwide, and in most cases, goes undiagnosed. If left untreated, it can have important health consequences over time, including increased risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cardiac issues.

Breathing Disturbances is an innovative new Apple Watch metric that uses the accelerometer to detect small movements at the wrist associated with interruptions to normal respiratory patterns during sleep. Every 30 days, Apple Watch will analyze breathing disturbance data and notify users if it shows consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea so they can speak to their doctor about next steps, including potential diagnosis and treatment.

Because overall quality of sleep is important, Breathing Disturbances can also be used to assess restfulness of sleep. Breathing Disturbances can be influenced by alcohol, medications, sleep position, and more. Users can view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over a one-month, six-month, or one-year period.

For more informed conversations with their healthcare providers, users can export a PDF that shows when sleep apnea may have occurred, three months of breathing disturbance data, and additional information. Educational articles are also available within the Health app to help users learn more about sleep apnea.

The sleep apnea notification algorithm was developed using advanced machine learning and an extensive data set of clinical-grade sleep apnea tests. The feature was then validated in a clinical study — unprecedented in size for sleep apnea technology. In the clinical validation study, every participant identified by the algorithm had at least mild sleep apnea.

“Empowering consumers everywhere to have the ability to reliably identify the presence of abnormal breathing patterns during sleep can help uncover a woefully underdiagnosed and serious medical condition such as sleep apnea,” said Sairam Parthasarathy, M.D., University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Sleep, Circadian, and Neurosciences’s professor and director in Tucson, Arizona. “This is a major step forward in improving public health.”

Sleep apnea notifications and Breathing Disturbances add to a range of sleep health features for Apple Watch users. In addition to monitoring important overnight health metrics like heart rate and respiratory rate, Apple Watch also helps users meet their sleep goals and track their sleep over time.

The World’s First All-in-One Hearing Health Experience

Approximately 1.5 billion people around the world are living with hearing loss, according to the World Health Organization. Research has also identified links between hearing loss and impact on a person’s overall wellbeing, including dementia and social isolation.

To help users better understand their hearing health, Apple is introducing an end-to-end experience focused on prevention, awareness, and assistance.

Prevention

According to the Apple Hearing Study — a virtual longitudinal public research study conducted in collaboration with the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the World Health Organization — one in three people are regularly exposed to loud environmental noise levels that can impact their hearing. That can include common scenarios like taking the subway while commuting, mowing the lawn at home, attending a sporting event, and many more.

In order to help users prevent exposure to loud environmental noise while preserving the sound signature of what they’re listening to, Hearing Protection comes to AirPods Pro. The ear tips help to provide passive noise reduction, while the H2 chip helps to actively reduce louder, more intermittent noise at 48,000 times per second. On by default across all listening modes, Hearing Protection is helpful in a variety of loud settings. Plus, with an all-new multiband high dynamic range algorithm, sounds at live events like concerts remain natural and vibrant.

Awareness

Hearing loss often worsens gradually, leaving many people unaware that they may be living with the condition. Eighty percent of adults in the U.S. have not had their hearing checked in the last five years, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. To give users even more insights into hearing health, Apple is introducing an intuitive, clinical-grade hearing test based on the standard clinical approach called pure-tone audiometry that users can take themselves with their AirPods Pro and a compatible iPhone® or iPad®.

Users can take the convenient test in about five minutes from the comfort of their own home. The Hearing Test feature leverages advanced acoustic science and provides users with an interactive experience. When a user completes the test, they will see an easy-to-understand summary of their results, including a number representing hearing loss in each ear, a classification, and recommendations. The results, which include an audiogram, are stored privately and securely in the Health app, and can be shared with a healthcare provider to have more informed conversations.

The Hearing Test builds on learnings from the Apple Hearing Study and was developed using large-scale, real-world data. The feature was then validated against the clinical gold standard of pure-tone audiometry.

“Hearing health is a cornerstone of overall wellbeing. Protecting and preserving our hearing enhances our quality of life both in the short-term and long-term,” said Rick Neitzel, University of Michigan School of Public Health’s professor of Environmental Health Sciences and principal investigator of the Apple Hearing Study. “I’m thrilled Apple is introducing important tools to support people’s hearing health. These tools will help people protect their ears from noise pollution, be aware of changes in their hearing over time, and have important conversations with their healthcare providers when they need additional support.”

Assistance

Learning about hearing loss is a critical step to getting necessary assistance, which can often be challenging due to cost and access. Global research shows hearing loss often goes untreated. In fact, the Apple Hearing Study revealed that 75 percent of people diagnosed with hearing loss haven’t received the assistive support that they need.

AirPods Pro add an innovative over-the-counter Hearing Aid capability for users with mild to moderate hearing loss. Using the personalized hearing profile from the Hearing Test, this new feature seamlessly transforms AirPods Pro into a clinical-grade hearing aid. After setup, the feature enables personalized dynamic adjustments so users have the sounds around them boosted in real time. This helps them better engage in conversation, and keeps them connected to the people and environment around them. With the incredible audio quality of AirPods Pro, the user’s personalized hearing profile is automatically applied to music, movies, games, and phone calls across their devices, without needing to adjust any settings. Users can also set up the Hearing Aid feature with an audiogram created by a hearing health professional.

The Hearing Aid feature was clinically validated in a controlled, randomized study that evaluated the perceived benefit of the feature and its custom settings compared to an audiologist-assisted setup.

After taking the Hearing Test, the user’s hearing profile can also help to personalize the AirPods Pro listening experience for even more people, including those with little to no hearing loss who can still benefit from specific adjustments at individual frequencies. To help provide the best listening experience, Media Assist is an all-new feature that helps boost certain parts of speech on a phone call or instruments within a soundtrack to help an even broader population.

These features build on the hearing health tools Apple currently offers its users. For example, with the Noise app, Apple Watch users can enable notifications for when environmental noise levels might affect their hearing health. On iPhone, users can set a headphone volume limit where they can turn on Reduce Loud Audio and drag a slider to a preferred decibel level. Apple also offers additional accessibility features for users to customize settings to meet their hearing needs.

“For decades, Apple has led the way in designing products for everyone and supporting users with a broad spectrum of hearing abilities,” said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. “These features on AirPods Pro will make an impact on so many people by driving more awareness around hearing health and empowering individuals with new customizable tools to help them stay connected.”

Additional features coming to Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad include:

The new Vitals app on Apple Watch gives users a way to check in on their daily health status and view key overnight health metrics, like heart rate and respiratory rate, and gain better context when it comes to their health.
The Health app offers additional support for pregnant users to reflect changes in their physical and mental health during this important time. Users can view the current gestational age and log symptoms in Cycle Tracking. Apple Watch users can also receive recommendations to review features like high heart rate notifications.
Time spent journaling can be saved as mindful minutes in the Health app, and users can log their state of mind right in Journal.

Since launching the Health app in 2014, Apple has introduced meaningful features that focus on 18 areas of health and fitness across Apple Watch, AirPods®, iPhone, and iPad. Apple is committed to empowering users on their health journey by building actionable features into the products they use every day that are grounded in science, and have privacy at the core.

Built with Privacy at the Core

Privacy is fundamental in the design and development across all of Apple’s health features. When a user’s device is locked with a passcode, Touch ID®, or Face ID®, all of their health and fitness data in the Health app — other than Medical ID — is encrypted. Any Health data backed up to iCloud® is encrypted both in transit and on Apple servers. When using iOS, iPadOS®, and watchOS® with the default two-factor authentication and a passcode, Health app data synced to iCloud is encrypted end-to-end, meaning that Apple does not have the key to decrypt the data and therefore cannot read it.

Availability

Some features may not be available in all regions or all languages, or with all makes and models.
The sleep apnea notifications are expected to receive marketing authorization from the FDA and other global health authorities soon, with availability this month in more than 150 countries and regions, including the U.S., the EU, and Japan. The feature will be supported on Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra® 2.
The Hearing Test and Aid features are expected to receive marketing authorization from global health authorities soon and will be supported with AirPods Pro 2 with the latest firmware when paired with a compatible iPhone or iPad, and will be available this fall in more than 100 countries and regions, including the U.S., Germany, and Japan.
The Hearing Protection feature is expected to be available in fall 2024 and will work with AirPods Pro 2 with the latest firmware when paired with a compatible iPhone, iPad, or Mac® running the latest operating system. The feature will be available in the U.S. and Canada.

Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV+. Apple’s more than 150,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth and to leaving the world better than we found it.

¹The sleep apnea notification feature is pending FDA clearance and is expected to be available later this month. The feature will be supported on Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2. It is intended to detect signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea for people 18 years or older without a diagnosis of sleep apnea.

²The Hearing Protection feature works with AirPods Pro 2 with the latest firmware when paired with a compatible iPhone, iPad, or Mac running the latest operating system. The feature will be available in the U.S. and Canada. See support.apple.com/120850 for total attenuation and more information.

³The Hearing Test and Hearing Aid features are expected to be available fall 2024. The Hearing Aid feature is pending marketing authorization from the FDA and other global health authorities. The Hearing Test and Hearing Aid features will be supported on AirPods Pro 2 with the latest firmware paired with a compatible iPhone or iPad with iOS 18 or iPadOS 18 and later, and is intended for people 18 years or older. The Hearing Aid feature is intended for people with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss.

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