In the 1960’s, the cartoon show “The Jetsons” predicted what they thought 2062 would look like. They predicted flying cars, commercial inter-planetary travel, and a two-hour work week.

While we are waiting on all of that to still come into fruition, they did make one remarkably accurate prediction that we have today: the future of watches. We are able to make video calls from our watches, and have been for a while.

However, the future is proving to be even better than fiction: watches are now diagnosing medical problems.

Geoffrey Tison of the University of California San Francisco and Avesh Singh of Cardiogram worked together on a study that showed that household wearable technology like Fitbit and the Apple Watch were able to detect hypertension with 82% accuracy, sleep apnea with 90% accuracy, and abnormal heart rhythms with 97% accuracy.

The implications of this could radically alter the treatment of these conditions.

Instead of spending thousands to go to a highly-specialized doctor who uses specific tools to diagnose a condition, you may have just as much luck with a home device you may already own. Apple may one day even decide to refine and perfect its devices’ ability to diagnose these problems and market them as a day-to-day convenience as well as a medical tool.

While we don’t quite have all of what the Jetsons promised quite yet, in other ways, we’re more advanced than the Jetsons!

Eric Cawley is an occasional blogger for Gary Stringham & Associates. Gary provides consulting and expert witness services in embedded systems such as robotics. Feel free to contact Gary at 208-939-6984.