Apple Watch heart monitoring causes too many false alarms, study says

Heart monitoring technology in smartwatches can be life-saving. It may also lead to false-positive results, unnecessary visits to the doctor and needless anxiety among users, medical researchers warn. 

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that only 11.4% of patients who visited a Mayo Clinic after receiving alarming heart rhythm results from their Apple Watch were actually diagnosed with actionable heart conditions. 

The findings captured doctor visits over a six-month period after Apple added FDA-approved tools to detect abnormal heart rhythms in 2018. During that time, at least 264 people told their physician that the smartwatch displayed concerning results, the researchers said. 

Half of those patients had been previously diagnosed with heart problems, and only 30 others left the doctor with a cardiac diagnosis, researchers said in the study.

There are several cases of Apple Watch users saying that the devices saved their life after alerting them to issues they may have otherwise ignored.

However, the recent study indicates that false-positive results from personal health tracking devices may lead to the over-utilization of healthcare resources, or cause "anxiety among the 'worried well,'" researchers concluded.

They then urged Apple and the Food and Drug Administration to "carefully consider the unintended consequences of widespread direct-to-consumer screening for asymptomatic atrial fibrillation."

Follow Dalvin Brown on Twitter: @Dalvin_Brown.