Every time I feel the tickle of a sore throat or a sniffly nose — it’s not just the sickness I dread, it’s the anxiety of calling in sick.
For some reason, I just feel like everyone’s secretly thinking I’m chucking a sickie. Which I would never do now that I am in my forties. 😉
But what if you could just skip the awkwardness all together and just send your overnight results from your Apple Watch.
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The power of predictive wearables
A recent conversation sparked on popular social media site Reddit after Apple Watch users shared how their devices knew they were sick before they did:
It got people talking about the potential predictive powers of wearables.
Testing the Apple Watch Series 10
I’ve been testing the new Apple Watch Series 10 and its vitals feature, and the results are worth a second look.
Previously, you had to access metrics such as heart rate and blood oxygen in separate apps. But now, you can see five key health metrics in one snapshot:
- Heart Rate ❤️
- Respiratory Rate 🌬️
- Wrist Temperature 🌡️
- Blood Oxygen 🩸
- Sleep Duration 😴
These metrics help you see your baseline or typical range, and when two or more of these falls outside your average, you get a notification.
The ‘sick day’ proof
Just over two weeks ago, I fell ill. When I checked my Apple Watch, my results showed that my wrist temperature and respiratory rate were clearly in the high zone.
- 6 Oct: My results show elevated wrist temperature and respiratory rate.
- 5 Oct: The day before, two metrics were close to tipping over.
- 4 Oct: The day before that, everything was closer to my usual average.
The big question: Can it predict sickness?
What isn’t clear is whether these metrics can truly predict illness before it hits. I caught up with Sunrise GP Dr Ginni Mansberg.
“What we’re less sure about is whether you can put all of these different metrics together through this tech and use it to predict someone getting sick. For that, we have absolutely no data. But it’s really interesting,” Mansberg said.
While we wait for solid data, other wearables such as Whoop offer a recovery score based on multiple health measurements, and the Withings ScanWatch can track day and night temperature fluctuations, offering similar insights.
For now, the Apple Watch Series 10 is giving us a peek into the future of personal health tracking. And it might just help you (me) to overcome the dreaded “chucking a sickie” guilt.