- New research suggests smartwatches could predict fainting episodes
- This would give you time to reduce the risk of a fall
- The research was commissioned by Samsung
More often than not, fainting episodes come out of nowhere, leaving a split second for someone to catch you before you hit the ground. But what if your smartwatch could warn you that a faint is approaching before it actually happens? It sounds like something out of science fiction, but it could one day become reality.
That’s the premise behind a scientific research paper commissioned by Samsung, which concludes that it may be possible for a wearable device to warn you that you’re at risk of fainting minutes before it occurs. That could potentially give you time to get to a safer spot—like a couch—so that the sudden loss of consciousness doesn’t send you crashing onto the hard floor.
In the study, researchers from Chung-Ang University Gwangmyeong Hospital in South Korea said that Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 is likely to provide the ability to predict vasovagal syncope (a condition that can lead to fainting) as much as five minutes before it occurs.
How It Works
Why the Galaxy Watch 6? Well, it has a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor that tracks your heart rate. The researchers used this to monitor test subjects’ heart rate variability, then fed the resulting data into an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. This, in turn, looked for patterns that emerged just before people fainted.
From this, the researchers were able to predict fainting episodes with an accuracy of 84.6%. Samsung said that the AI model had a clinical sensitivity of 90%, meaning it was able to identify true positives and negatives with a high degree of accuracy.
Not Here Yet
Vasovagal syncope is a common condition. Indeed, “Up to 40% of people experience vasovagal syncope over their lifetime, with one-third experiencing recurrent episodes,” said Professor Junhwan Cho of the Department of Cardiology at Chung-Ang University Gwangmyeong Hospital. If a smartwatch is able to help you cut the risk of a fall from this condition, that could be a massive benefit for a lot of people.
Indeed, as Professor Cho noted, “An early warning could give patients enough time to get into a safe position or call for help, which could dramatically reduce the incidence of secondary injuries.”
While the results from this study are promising, it’s worth noting that this fainting prediction feature is not yet available in any of the best Samsung smartwatches. Instead, it was more of a proof of concept for the premise that a wearable can predict a fainting episode ahead of time.
But with the PPG sensor already on board many of Samsung’s smartwatches, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine a feature like this appearing in a future version of the company’s devices. Many of the best smartwatches on the market—including the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Garmin Fenix 8—also feature PPG sensors, meaning this feature could theoretically emerge in a smattering of other devices in the long run.
That said, further clinical testing and regulatory approval will likely be needed before any of that becomes a reality. When—or if—it does, though, it could save you from a nasty fall with a bit of time to spare.
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