Old-school watchmakers push smart features to counter Apple Watch

Global shipments of Swiss watches steadily slipped after the first Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015.

Business Standard : Watchmakers, caught off guard by the success of Apple Inc.’s smartwatch, are now trying to keep pace with changing customer tastes by introducing messaging alerts and other high-tech features to traditional watches.

Brands including TAG Heuer, Swatch and Fossil Group are working with Apple rivals such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Intel Corp. to offer their own smartwatches or hybrid versions that offer smart functions while retaining traditional design.

Global shipments of Swiss watches steadily slipped after the first Apple Watch was unveiled in 2015, a dip compounded by a slump in China sales. Despite picking up in the past two years, they were overtaken last holiday season by Apple’s smartwatch for the first time. UBS predicts Apple Watch sales will rise 40% next year to reach 33 million. The tech giant is expected to move 8.8 million shipments in the fourth quarter of this year, said Francisco Jeronimo, a research director at International Data Corporation.

“The global watch market has had a shock and it worries us,” Daeboong Kim, head of South Korea’s Watch & Clock Industry Cooperative, said in an interview at the world’s biggest industry fair in Hong Kong in September. The cooperative is getting advice from Samsung Electronics Co. , the world’s biggest smartphone maker, to help members develop watches with smart functions. Samsung and Apple declined to comment.

Sales of smartwatches overtook mechanical watches in 2016 while hybrid-watch sales rose to 7.5 million world-wide in 2017 from almost nothing in 2015 according to market-research firm Euromonitor International. Sales volumes for both watch types are set to double by 2020, it predicts.

The digital divide is growing, however, as the Apple Watch Series 4 released last month added an alert system for when the wearer falls down and a function designed to identify heart irregularities. Analysts say those features target a demographic of faithful watch buyers who are typically more resistant to technology: older customers.

While some traditional watchmakers have tried to move into smartwatches, many have focused on hybrids. Typically, these don’t have touch-screens. Instead, they are synced with smartphones via an app and alert the wearer to messages or calls through vibrations, blinking lights or by moving the watch’s hands. Via Bluetooth connection, users push buttons on the watch to control the phone’s camera and music functions.

TAG Heuer is one of the higher-end brands fighting back, releasing an upgrade of its smartwatch, the Connected Modular 41, earlier this year. The watch is the result of collaboration with Intel and Google. It has fitness tracking, GPS, and contactless payment.

Jean-Claude Biver, TAG Heuer’s chief executive, said its hybrid is having success because “it really looks and feels like a real watch, but with all the information you need.” TAG Heuer is owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, which declined to disclose sales figures... Read More

As health apps enter medical mainstream is there a way to bring some order?

The FDA has been doing away with regulatory action altogether on many diagnostic health apps targeting consumers.

Business Standard : The heart rate monitor built into the new Apple Watch has sparked sharp debate over its risks and benefits, even though the feature was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration.

But out of the spotlight, the FDA has been doing away with regulatory action altogether on many diagnostic health apps targeting consumers, seeking to accelerate digital health adoption by defining many of these as “low risk” medical devices.

As the number of mobile health apps surged to a record 325,000 in 2017, app performance is going largely unpoliced, leading to what’s been dubbed a “Wild West” situation. Unfortunately for health consumers, the public can’t rely on the research community to play the role of sheriff.

When colleagues and I recently examined the medical literature on direct-to-consumer diagnostic apps in a study published in Diagnosis, we repeatedly found studies marred by bias, technological naïveté or a failure to provide crucial information for consumers. There was also a glaring lack of studies with actual consumers to see how they use these apps and what the impact on individual health, whether for better or worse, might be.

The app will see you now?

Interactive diagnostic apps now go well beyond “Dr. Google” keyword searches. They promise personalized information on whether a nagging symptom can likely be relegated to self-care or whether a visit to the doctor’s office or even the emergency room may be needed. Some of these apps become so popular that they have been downloaded tens of millions of times.

To understand whether the promising nature of these apps is backed up by the evidence, we searched both the peer-reviewed literature and nonacademic sources. The disturbing unreliability of that evidence for the average consumer is starkly visible when you consider apps that “advise” (a carefully chosen word) whether you might have skin cancer.

There are hundreds of cancer-related apps. Perhaps because melanoma rates have been rising for decades and it’s one of the most common young adult cancers, the largest group of articles we found focused on dermatology apps. One of the most prominent is Skin Scan.

If you’re a physician or reasonably savvy consumer, Google Scholar provides the easiest access to evidence-based information. One of the first results that pops up is a 2013 article entitled, “Skin Scan: A demonstration of the need for FDA regulation of medical apps on iPhone.” If that title suggests a certain lack of objectivity, the problem isn’t limited to dermatology. We also found an orthopedist examining whether a symptom checker could “guess” the right diagnosis, and an ear, nose and throat doctor investigating whether an app could diagnose his own patients as well as he could... Read More

There are more cons than pros in Apple Watch's new heart monitor app

The watch will also have an "irregular rhythm" notification feature, which alerts people to potential problems and there's every reason to believe it will generate many false positives.

Business Stanadard : The newest version of the Apple Watch will feature a heart monitor app that can do a form of an electrocardiogram. Many have greeted this announcement as a great leap forward for health. The president of the American Heart Association even took part in the product launch.

For a more measured response, it’s worth looking at potential downsides, and it turns out there are a few.

The upside potential is twofold. First, doctors could monitor — at a distance — how patients with known heart problems are functioning outside the office. Second, the device could diagnose heart problems in people who don’t know they have them, picking up abnormal heart rhythms earlier than would otherwise be possible.

With respect to monitoring from a doctor, the Food and Drug Administration “cleared” the app — an easier hurdle to surmount than “approval.” But it specifically said people with diagnosed atrial fibrillation, one of the most common heart arrhythmias, should not be using the app.

If that’s the case, the major potential for the device — which will arrive later this year — is to pick up arrhythmias in otherwise healthy people. That’s still a big selling point. Picking up abnormal function earlier could theoretically lead to improvements in health, such as reductions in strokes.

But just because something seems like a good idea doesn’t mean it is. No screening test is perfect. In the simplest sense, whenever we consider the results of medical tests, they can be “positive” or “negative.”

In general, we would like people who are sick to have a positive screening result, and people who are well to have a negative result. Unfortunately, people who are sick sometimes have a negative result. Those are false negatives. People who are well sometimes have a positive result. Those are false positives.

Both of these outcomes are worrisome. A false negative might leave someone who needs medical help with a mistaken sense of assurance. Given that relatively few people have serious, undiagnosed arrhythmias with no symptoms (if people did, we would be screening for this more often), this isn’t the major concern. False positives are, because they cost us time and money, as well as cause emotional distress.

The health care system is already busy, if not overloaded. No physician wants to field calls from patients who have no problems. Such patients will require visits and further testing, and will potentially receive interventions. They’ll generate bills and harms without benefits... Read More

Apple Watch 3 LTE goes on sale: Airtel offer, Jio's new service and more

Apple Watch 3 LTE goes on sale in India from today and is available on both online and offline platforms

The much-awaited Apple Watch Series 3 Cellular edition is now available in India through Reliance Jio and Airtel owned platforms.

The watch, which comes in several variants, can now be purchased from Jio stores and Reliance Digital outlets.  Airtel users can order the watch through the telecom's online store.

The 38 mm variant of the watch is available for Rs 39,080, while the 42 mm model is being sold at Rs 41,120.

On the hardware front, the GPS only model of the watch comes with 8GB internal memory, while the GPS+Cellular model comes with 16 GB internal memory.

Watch Series 3 comes with a dual-core S3 processor and a W2 wireless chip.

Airtel is giving a cashback of Rs 5,000 to its customers who buy the watch through ICICI Credit EMI transactions from May 11 to June 10. The cashback will be credited within 90 days of the transaction.

Jio  has launched a new service called JioEverywhereConnect, especially for the watch. The service will allow users to use the same Jio number on both their iPhone and Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular).

The latest variants of the Apple Watch Series 3 comes with built-in cellular features. "Whether users are out for a run, at the pool or just trying to be more active throughout their day, Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular allows them to stay connected, make calls, receive texts and much more, even without iPhone nearby. The third-generation Apple Watch is an amazing health and fitness companion with intelligent coaching features, water resistance 50 meters and a barometric altimeter that measures relative elevation, " Jio said in a statement.

Pre-booking for the watches had begun on May 4 on all platforms for Airtel and Reliance Jio.