Apple Watch-based online med service Empirical Health has rolled out a major update.
The company is bringing AI-generated care plans to its users, which are based on individual user data from its Apple Watch app.
Empirical Health’s online doctor uses the Apple Watch to enable people to have a more informed relationship with their doctor.
Empirical Health 2.0 sees all your data distilled from the Apple Watch, with a real doctor on hand via the platform to review plans and oversee referrals and prescriptions. Improvements include:
AI-generated care plans: Empirical 2.0 will distill your wearable data and your health goals into an actionable care plan. While AI generates the plan, a real doctor reviews it and can order necessary labs, referrals, or prescriptions.
Support for blood pressure cuffs: Empirical Health can connect third-party blood pressure cuffs to manage hypertension care plans.
Benchmark creation: Resting heart rate, HRV, VO2Max, deep sleep %, REM sleep %, oxygen saturation, etc., are benchmarked against medical norms.
New workout templates: Zone 2 training, high-intensity training (e.g., to improve VO2Max), and strength training.
It’s designed to work just like a GP – but one that will look at your wearable health data to make informed judgments on your health. That means it can set up plans for general well-being or create care plans around medical conditions.
And those conditions can be serious. Talking to Empirical founder Brandon Ballinger, he explained to Wareable how Empirical 2.0 can use the Apple Watch to diagnose and create plans for conditions such as Long Covid, Dysautonomia, and POTS.
“Empirical creates a plan to evaluate you for POTS,” he said. “It starts with taking orthostatic vitals using a heart rate monitor and a blood pressure cuff (essentially, an at-home version of the $1,900 tilt table test).
“Then, we use your ECG and blood test results to rule out other causes of tachycardia. If positive, a personalized care plan with medication, low-intensity exercise (based on the science behind the CHOP protocol), and hydration strategies is designed (and unlike the VO2Max program above, we avoid high-intensity training to prevent crashes).”
Empirical works with Apple Watch Series 4 and later – but if users require an ECG and are using an Apple Watch SE (for example), it will recommend FDA-approved over-the-counter alternatives instead.
The update also supports third-party blood pressure cuffs for users managing hypertension, and personalized benchmarks for biometrics such as heart rate variability, VO2Max, oxygen saturation, and sleep stages.
If Empirical notices, for example, that you’re in the lower percentile of the population for deep sleep time from analyzing your Apple Watch sleep stages, it can design a protocol to assess your sleep hygiene, sleep apnea risk, and recommend further testing.
Empirical isn’t just about managing health, either, with new workout templates also included covering everything from zone 2 training to strength programs.
It’s also set to become much more wide-reaching than we’ve seen previously, with medical care expanding to 27 states and 200 million people.
You can check whether you’re included in that coverage via the free download from the App Store, though note that in-app purchases exist if you want to unlock all the available features.