Apple's sleep apnea feature gets green light from Health Canada

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As Apple continues to build on its intelligent health features, Canadians will soon have access to a new feature designed to help identify signs of sleep apnea.

Health Canada has now approved and provided a medical device licence for the Sleep Apnea Notification feature on newer models of the Apple Watch.

Health Canada

Apple says this feature will be available to Canadians using Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 with watchOS 11 this fall.

How will sleep apnea alerts work?

Sleep apnea is a dangerous condition that is estimated to affect more than one billion people around the world, but many people remain undiagnosed.

This new tool will monitor small movements at the wrist that are associated with interruptions in normal respiratory patterns, tracked by a new Apple Watch metric called Breathing Disturbances.

Apple

Users will then be able to view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over a one-month, six-month, or one-year period.

The Breathing Disturbances tool will work in conjunction with the intelligent health features already available to track overnight metrics like heart rate, respiratory rate, and wrist temperature.

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