Following a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Owlet has stopped selling its popular Smart Sock family in the US. On October 5th, the agency contacted Owlet to tell the company it was selling the wearables “without marketing approval, clearance or authorization.”
In a response spotted by Deseret News, Owlet says it’s complying with the FDA’s request. It has stopped selling the socks while it seeks clearance from the FDA. The company says it will offer a “new sleep monitoring solution” in the near future.
“With over one million babies monitored, we are extremely proud of the innovation and technology Owlet has delivered,” the company said. “We will continue to stay focused on our mission and cooperate with the FDA so we can continue to provide sleep monitoring products and solutions to parents and babies.”
If you own the Smart Sock 3 or one of its predecessors, Owlet notes the FDA didn’t identify any safety with the wearables. It also hasn’t asked the company to issue a recall. Owlet says it will continue to support those products while it works on a new device.
The stress and uncertainty surrounding the COVID pandemic, along with misinformation about the life-saving vaccines developed in response have broken many a weak mind over the past two years, leading people to try everything from injecting themselves with bleach and inhaling nebulized hydrogen peroxide, to slugging down horse dewormer in misguided attempts to outwit modern medicine. Surprise, none of it actually works. What's worse is that this sort of behavior is nothing new. Quack homeopathic remedies have existed for centuries — curing the bubonic plague through blood letting, self-flagellation, or sitting in hot sewers to drive off the fever, for example — and supported by little more than anecdotal evidence.
In their latest book, Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases, Dr. Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen delve into the fascinating histories of some of humanity's deadliest diseases and the society-preserving works of the scientists who the developed cures, vaccines and treatments to counter them. In the excerpt below, we take a look at the deployment of antibiotics and antitoxins in the fight against diphtheria, anthrax, and other deadly diseases.
Aside from putting barriers between us and plagues, the next primary approach to defeating them was to attack them directly, thanks to breakthroughs in science that created and discovered antibiotics and antitoxins. Some of these medicines aren’t simply employed against microorganisms like bacteria, but act as antifungals, antivirals, and antiparasitics as well. Today, there are more than a hundred types of medicines in this group. The World Health Organization (WHO) maintains a list of medicines deemed essential for a country’s healthcare system to best care for its citizenry, and a large chunk of those essential meds battle infectious diseases.
Some might assume that penicillin was the first definitive weapon discovered in our fight against pathogens, but there were several that preceded it and broke significant ground when they were discovered.
The Prussian-born Emil von Behring was a doctor and an assistant to the famed Robert Koch at the Institute for Hygiene in Berlin. In 1888, he developed a way to treat those suffering from diphtheria and tetanus. Not a disease familiar to many these days, diphtheria is prevented by a vaccine that is usually coupled with your routine tetanus shot. In the 1800s, diphtheria was a terrible killer that inflamed a victim’s heart, inflicted paralysis, and caused a suffocating membrane to cover the throat. In Spain, the disease was so rampant in 1613 it was nicknamed El Año de los Garrotillos, or “The Year of Strangulations.”
Much of the disease caused by diphtheria is driven by the toxin created by Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Von Behring infected rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs with weakened (attenuated) forms of it, then gathered their serum—the liquid fraction of their blood, minus the red and white blood cells. That light, honey-colored liquid, which contained antibodies to the diphtheria toxin, was then injected into another set of animals that were sickened with fully virulent diphtheria bacteria.
The newly infected animals given the serum didn’t die because they gained a passive form of protection against the toxin with the donated serum. In 1891, a child’s life was saved using this new method for the first time. The serum was produced in large quantities using animals like sheep and horses. At a time when 50,000 children died annually from diphtheria, it was a miraculous treatment.
Tetanus serum was created soon after, becoming a workable treatment by 1915. Today, antitoxins are used to treat botulism, diphtheria, and anthrax. The same principles of antitoxin treatment are utilized for antivenom therapy to remedy poisonous animal bites, including those from black widow spiders, scorpions, box jellyfish, and cobras. A treatment called passive antibody therapy, in which the serum of patients recovered from an infection is given to other sick patients (also called convalescent plasma therapy), may have been helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic, though data is still forthcoming. Antibodies against infections can not only treat diseases like toxic shock syndrome, but prevent infections during exposures, such as those for hepatitis A and B and botulism. But the antibodies themselves have been employed to treat more than just bites, stings, and infections. Intravenous immunoglobulins from pooled donors treat a variety of disorders, such as ITP (immune thrombocytopenia) and severe immune deficiency diseases.
Another antibody therapy—monoclonal antibodies—has been a game-changer in treatments over the last decade or so, the first one approved by the FDA in 1986. These specially designed antibodies are used to treat several types of cancers (melanoma, breast, and stomach, among many others) and autoimmune diseases (including Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis). The antibodies themselves are Y-shaped proteins that bind to a specific protein. In doing so, they can elicit a whole range of effects: switching on or off immune system cascades, destroying cells, blocking or engaging cell activities. The antibodies only bind to a single antigen, hence “mono,” and are produced by clones of cells that churn out the antibodies in large amounts. Sometimes they can also be bound to radioactive particles, delivering radioactivity directly to a cancer cell. Others can be bound to a chemotherapy agent. Often, they work alone.
In the realm of cancer therapy, most of us have some understanding of chemotherapy. But the origin of the term chemotherapy itself actually came from the fight to treat infections, not cancer. At the turn of the twentieth century, antibiotics had yet to establish themselves as a cure for infections. That changed with a physician and scientist named Paul Ehrlich. He was born in 1854 in East Prussia (now Poland) where his father ran a lottery office. During his career, he took advantage of the burgeoning German dye industry to experiment on how cells looked stained with different chemicals. His love of color led to some notable idiosyncrasies, like carrying colored pencil stubs in his pockets. But Ehrlich’s work led to what would become the famous Ziehl-Neelsen acid-fast stain for tuberculosis. (Unfortunately, he also stained his very own TB bacteria from his sputum, though luckily survived the illness.) Later he collaborated with the aforementioned Emil von Behring, a Nobel Prize–winning physiologist, on serum therapy for tetanus and diphtheria.
But perhaps Ehrlich’s most notable discovery happened by accident as he sought a chemical cure to treat a specific disease—a “chemotherapy.” Specifically, he hoped to cure sleeping sickness, a disease caused by a microscopic parasite called Trypanosoma brucei. He had been working with a chemical called atoxyl (meaning “nontoxic”), ironically an arsenic compound. Ehrlich coined the term “magic bullet” related to his hope of finding that perfect chemical that would hopefully kill a very specific pathogen, the Trypanosoma parasite, and not the patient. He ended up testing nine hundred variations of the arsenic compounds on mice. None were particularly effective, but he revisited #606 because it seemed to have an effect on a newly discovered bacterium believed to cause syphilis. In 1910, the medicine called Salvarsan (sometimes simply called “606”) was proven to be effective—it killed the syphilis spirochete and left the guinea pigs, rabbits, and mice alive.
In the next few decades, new research would be applied to battle not just the pandemics of old, but daily infections that could upend people’s lives. A scratch or bite could kill if those Staphylococcus or Streptococcus infections spiraled out of control. A German scientist named Gerhard Domagk began working with a group of chemicals called azo dyes that had a characteristic double nitrogen bond. Azo dyes can color textiles, leather, and foods various shades of brilliant orange, red, and yellow. When an azo compound had a sulfonamide group attached (a nitrogen and sulfur link with two oxygen atoms double-bonded to the sulfur, should you need to impress friends at a party), they knew they’d found something special. The sulfonamide group inhibits a bacteria’s ability to make folate, a necessary B vitamin. Humans, on the other hand, can obtain folate through their diet. And so another magic bullet was born. The new compound seemed to work in mice infected with Streptococcus, otherwise known as strep.
Domagk used the new medicine, called KL 730 and later patented as Prontosil, on his own daughter Hildegard. Suffering from a severe strep infection, she received a shot of Prontosil and recovered, though the drug left a telltale dyed, reddish discoloration at the injection site.
“Sulfa” drugs would go on to be used in a variety of medicines, including antibiotics (trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole, aka Bactrim), diabetes medicines (glyburide, a sulfonylurea), diuretics (furosemide, or Lasix), pain meds (celecoxib, or Celebrex), and are also used today to treat pneumonia, skin and soft tissue infections, and urinary tract infections, among others.
Domagk’s work won him the Nobel Prize in 1935. However, the Nazis, who disapproved of how the Nobel committee tried to help German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, had their Gestapo arrest Domagk for accepting the prize and forced him to give it back. He was able to receive it later in 1947.
After offering free mental health exercises at the beginning of the pandemic, Headspace has announced that it's opening up its service for free to a particularly vulnerable group for mental stressors: teens. The company's new Headspace for Teens initiative is fairly straightforward: Kids between 13 and 18 will be able to access a selection of exercises — including things to help you reduce stress, focus on being mindful and sleep better — at no charge. The only requirement is that they sign up to be members of the youth-focused non-profits Bring Change to Mind or Peer Health Exchange. Headspace says it also plans to extend the free offering throughout the world as it partners with more non-profits.
“Through our research, we see that teens today are under a great deal of stress and experience high levels of anxiety due to the demands of school, their jobs, extracurriculars, social life, and a general uncertainty about their futures,” Alice Nathoo, Head of Social Impact at Headspace, said in a statement. “Even though many teens have an awareness of and vocabulary for mental health issues, this doesn't always translate to action."
Given just how anxiety-inducing the world can be these days, it makes sense for Headspace to give people a taste of the benefits from meditation, de-stressing and solid sleep habits. It's no replacement for a therapist — as we've explored in our guide to finding at-home mental health support during the pandemic — but Headspace's offerings still have the potential to help many people.
The Food and Drug Administration is moving closer to making more affordable over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids a reality for millions of Americans with mild or moderate hearing loss. The agency issued a proposal to create a category of approved devices that people would be able to buy without a prescription, hearing exam or having to arrange a fitting with an audiologist.
"The proposed rule is designed to help increase competition in the market while also ensuring the safety and effectiveness of OTC and prescription hearing aids," the FDA said. Around 15 percent of adult Americans (some 37.5 million) have hearing difficulties, according to the agency.
The FDA's goal is to make it easier for those who could benefit from hearing aids to actually get one — it says only a fifth of people who fall into that category use such a device. The agency is hoping to tackle some of the barriers people might encounter, including cost, ease of access, social stigma and state and federal regulations.
In 2017, the federal government passed the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act with the aim of improving access to more affordable hearing aids. Hearing aids have only available with a prescription as the FDA classed them as Class I or II medical devices. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in July that, in part, instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to publish a proposed rule for OTC hearing aids within 120 days.
The proposal is now open to a 90-day public comment period. If and when the rule is finalized, it will come into effect 60 days after it's published in the federal register.
Several companies have already made moves to gain a foothold in the OTC hearing aid market. Earlier this year, Bose started selling its SoundControl hearing aids after gaining approval from the FDA, while Jabra unveiled its Enhance Plus earbuds a couple of months ago. Other companies are blending hardware and tech in hearing aids, including Bragi and Olive Union.
Apple, meanwhile, recently updated AirPods Pro with a feature that amplifies the volume of other people's voices in conversation while reducing ambient noise. The company is also said to be looking into ways of using AirPods as health devices.
Since 2011, Noom has made a name for itself as a weight loss app. This week, with the introduction of a new feature called Noom Mood, it’s expanding into mental wellness. If you’ve already tried the aforementioned weight loss program, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect from Noom Mood.
As you embark on the four-month program, each day the app will provide you with articles and activities centered on teaching you skills you can use to manage and regulate the stress and emotions in your life. Along the way, you’ll be asked to log your mood, and if you ever need additional help, the program includes access to a personal coach.
It’s not surprising to see Noom expand beyond weight loss. It always had a mindfulness streak, and it must be said there’s a lot of money to be made in the health and wellness space. Over the course of the pandemic, a company like Headspace went from a relatively obscure startup to one that now has a $3 billion valuation and partnerships with companies like Netflix and Waze.
The fitness tracker isn’t dead, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably one of the people keeping these little devices alive. Smartwatches have all but taken over the mainstream wearable space, but the humble fitness tracker remains an option for those who want a gadget to do one thing right all the time. Despite the headwinds, there are still a bunch of fitness bands out there to choose from. Engadget has tested many of them and picked out the best for most people.
What do fitness trackers do best?
The answer seems simple: Fitness trackers are best at monitoring exercise, be it a 10-minute walk around the block or that half marathon you’ve been diligently training for. Obviously, smartwatches can do that too, but there are some areas where fitness bands have the upper hand: focus, design, battery life and price.
When I say “focus,” I’m alluding to the fact that fitness trackers are made to track activity well; anything else is extra. They often don’t have the bells and whistles that smartwatches do, which could distract from their activity-tracking abilities. They also tend to have fewer sensors and internal components, which keeps them smaller and lighter. Fitness trackers are also a better option for those who just want a less conspicuous device on their wrists all day.
Battery life tends to be better on fitness trackers, too. While most smartwatches last one to two days on a single charge, fitness bands will last five days to one week — and that’s with all-day and all-night use.
When it comes to price, there’s no competition. Most worthwhile smartwatches start at $175 to $200, but you can get a solid fitness tracker starting at $70. Yes, more expensive bands exist (and we recommend a few here), but you’ll find more options under $150 in the fitness tracker space than in the smartwatch space.
When to get a smartwatch instead
If you need a bit more from your wearable, you’ll likely want a smartwatch instead. There are things like on-watch apps, alerts and even more robust fitness features that smartwatches have and fitness trackers don’t. You can use one to control smart home appliances, set timers and reminders, check weather reports and more. Some smartwatches let you choose which apps you want to receive alerts from, and the options go beyond just call and text notifications.
But the extra fitness features are arguably the most important thing to think about when deciding between a fitness tracker and a smartwatch. The latter devices tend to be larger, giving them more space for things like GPS, barometers, onboard music storage and more. While you can find built-in GPS on select fitness trackers, it’s not common.
Engadget picks
Best overall: Fitbit Charge 5
Valentina Palladino / Engadget
Fitbit's Charge 5 has everything most people would want in a fitness tracker. First and foremost, it's not a smartwatch. That means it has a slightly lower profile on the wrist and lasts days on a single charge while tracking activity and sleep. It also has a full-color AMOLED display — a big improvement from the smaller, grayscale screen on last year's Charge 4. That display, along with a thinner design, make Charge 5 feel more premium than its predecessor.
But it also costs $180 — $30 more than the Charge 4 — and that's due in part to the design upgrades but also some additional features. The Charge 5 has EDA sensors for stress tracking and it will eventually support ECG measurements and Daily Readiness Scores (the latter is for only for Premium subscribers). Those are on top of existing features that were carried over from the Charge 4 — most notably, Fitbit Pay support and built-in GPS. The former lets you pay for coffee or groceries with a swipe of your wrist, while the latter helps map outdoor runs, bike rides and other activities. Built-in GPS remains the star of the show here — it's fast and accurate, making the Charge 5 the best option if you want a do-it-all wearable that’s focused on fitness.
A more subtle-looking alternative is the $100 Garmin Vivosmart 4. It’s thinner than the Charge 5 and fits in a bit better with bracelets and other jewelry you might wear regularly. But its attractive design is only part of its appeal — Garmin knows how to track fitness, and the Vivosmart 4 is proof that you don’t need to drop hundreds on one of the company’s fitness watches to get a capable device.
Like the Charge 5, the Vivosmart 4 tracks all-day activity and sleep and has a pulse ox sensor for blood oxygen saturation measurements. It has only connected GPS capabilities, and it has universal music controls that can control the playback of most anything. The band is also waterproof and can track basic swim workouts, plus it also has a battery life of up to seven days. While it’s similar to the Charge 5 in that the Vivosmart 4 works with both Android and iOS devices, it’s a bit more flexible as it syncs with Apple Health (the Charge 5 and other Fitbit devices do not).
If you only have $100 to spare, the Fitbit Inspire 2 is the best option. It strips out all the luxury features from the Charge 5 and keeps only the essentials. You won’t get built-in GPS, Fitbit Pay or Spotify control but you do get excellent activity tracking, automatic workout detection, smartphone alerts and plenty more. As the updated version of the Inspire HR, the Inspire 2 includes a heart rate monitor, which the device uses to keep track of all-day heart rate, active zone minutes, sleep stages and more.
The Inspire HR is thinner than the Charge 5 but it also has interchangeable bands, so you can switch up its style whenever you feel like it. Its design is also swimproof, and it should last up to 10 days on a single charge. Fitbit also recently added Tile-tracking to the Inspire 2, allowing you to find your misplaced band using the Bluetooth locator feature and the Tile mobile app. All of these features make it the best value fitness tracker you can get.
The $60 Samsung Galaxy Fit 2 band is almost like a more affordable Garmin Vivosmart 4. The two trackers share the same skeletal design but the Galaxy Fit looks a bit more utilitarian — you can swap out its bands, though — something you can’t do on Garmin’s device.
We haven’t given the Fit 2 the full review treatment, but Engadget’s Cherlynn Low was impressed with the original Galaxy Fit: the Tizen-based interface is colorful and easy to use, and plenty of people will appreciate its durable, no-nonsense design. It tracks a bunch of workouts as well and even has auto-exercise recognition. That’s on top of its daily activity tracking and sleep monitor, all of which uses the built-in heart rate monitor to collect pulse data throughout the day.
The kicker for the Galaxy Fit 2 is battery life — the tiny tracker can last for up to 15 days on a single charge, and you can even extend it to 21 days if you change some settings. That’s much longer than most competing bands, so even if Samsung isn’t as comprehensive as Garmin or Fitbit is when it comes to fitness data collection and analysis, the Galaxy Fit 2 is a good option for those who want a basic tracker that they can safely forget to charge each night.
All of the previously mentioned fitness trackers are attractive in their own way (bonus points to those that have interchangeable bands), but they share a similar look. There aren’t many alternative designs for these devices anymore. The $70 Withings Move watch is an exception, and one of the most traditionally fashionable fitness trackers you can get. It’s an analog watch with a couple of health monitoring features including step, calorie, distance and sleep tracking, connected GPS, auto-recognition for more than 30 workouts and a water-resistant design. But we really love it for its button-cell battery, which can last up to 18 months before needing a replacement.
Apple's health ambitions for AirPods might extend beyond using them to boost conversations. Wall Street Journalsources claim Apple is exploring multiple ways it can use AirPods as health devices. It might use the buds as hearing aids, but it could also use the motion sensors to correct your posture. A prototype would even include a thermometer to check your core body temperature, according to leaked documents.
The features wouldn't show up in 2022 and might not be available at all, the sources said. Apple declined to comment.
Apple would face numerous hurdles to marketing AirPods as health gadgets. The company would likely require regulatory clearance for at least some features. A US Food and Drug Administration ruleset due in 2022 might make that possible, but it could still take months to approve the earbuds. Even Bose had to wait a long time before it could sell its FDA-cleared SoundControl hearing aids.
There are technical challenges, too. Right now, AirPods Pro won't last longer than 4.5 hours for listening (with noise cancelling on), and 3.5 hours for calls — that just wouldn't be practical for health wearables that might need to sit in your ears all day. They'd also need to be comfortable for long periods and adapt to varying types of hearing loss.
It's easy to see why Apple might expand the AirPods' usefulness, though. As with the Apple Watch, health could be a selling point that grow the audience beyond the enthusiast core. It might also court a relatively underserved market of people who may have mild or moderate hearing loss, but either can't afford most hearing aids or don't like the limited functionality and drab designs that often define the category.
In a landmark announcement today, the World Health Organization has recommended the use of the first-ever malaria vaccine. RTS,S, also known as Mosquirix. Specifically, the WHO says it should be deployed for children in sub-Saharan Africa and other areas where with moderate to high malaria transmission. The announcement follows in the footsteps of huge vaccine advancements around the COVID-19 pandemic. To be clear, though, RTS,S isn't an mRNA vaccine, which have the potential to make an even bigger impact on malaria and other diseases that have affected humans for ages.
“This is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “Using this vaccine on top of existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives each year.”
RTS,S has an efficacy rate of preventing 39 percent against malaria cases and 29 percent of severe cases, based on trials in Africa involving small children. That may seem particularly low, but when combined with other anti-malarial tools, like bed netting with insecticide, the WHO says the vaccine could potentially save tens of thousands of lives annually. The organization estimates that more than 260,000 African children die from malaria every year.
Crucially, the WHO also says RTS,S can be deployed easily, is safe to use and is cost effective to roll out. According to The Guardian, the company behind the vaccine, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), says it will supply up to 15 million doses annual at no more than 5 percent of the production cost. The WHO and GSK are looking for additional sources of funding from partners and governments.
RTS,S is just the start, though. Thanks to mRNA-based technology, which can teach our bodies how to respond to specific diseases, Oxford University's R21 vaccine is up to 77 percent effective when it comes to preventing malaria. And based on tests so far, it's proven to be safe.
"For centuries, malaria has stalked sub-Saharan Africa, causing immense personal suffering,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said in a statement. “Today’s recommendation offers a glimmer of hope for the continent which shoulders the heaviest burden of the disease and we expect many more African children to be protected from malaria and grow into healthy adults.”
Last year, Amazon announced Alexa Care Hub, a free service that uses Alexa to let people check in on family members. The so-called "caregiver" can see notifications and alerts when someone uses Alexa as a way of letting you know that someone they want to keep an eye on is up and about. It also lets the "care receiver" say "Alexa, call for help" and it'll contact the caregiver immediately. Amazon didn't charge for this, but today it's adding a new feature called Alexa Together to the service. It'll be a $20/month service that gives an aging family member 24/7 access to Urgent Response, which Amazon describes as a professional emergency help line.
Alexa Together will also make caregiving easier to share among multiple family members by letting multiple people be designated as support contacts for a single individual. Other features include support for third-party devices that can detect when someone has fallen at home, the ability to add contacts to an individual's Alexa account so they can make hands-free calls, and set reminders on someone else's device or link up a music service for them to play tunes through.
At a high level, it sounds like Alexa Together basically makes it easier for other people to manage a family member's Alexa-capable device so they use it more. And if they use it more, the caregiver will see that it's being used and know their family member is going about their normal day. It's a bit convoluted, but the 24/7 access to Urgent Response might be worth the $20 per month cost. Alexa Together will have a free six-month trial period (or one full year if you've been using the Alexa Care Hub already) when it launches later this year.
Alexa Together is designed to help aging family members feel more comfortable and confident living independently, and to give the entire family peace of mind. With Alexa Together, aging loved ones have 24/7 hands-free access to Urgent Response, a professional emergency helpline. pic.twitter.com/WrU1XFOBrQ
Apple is reportedly working on ways to help detect and diagnose conditions such as depression, anxiety and cognitive decline using an iPhone. Researchers hope that analysis of data such as mobility, sleep patterns and how people type could spot behaviors associated with those conditions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Other measurements could include facial expression analysis and heart and respiration rates. All of the processing would take place on the device, with no data sent to Apple servers.
The company is working on research projects that could lead to the development of these features. The University of California, Los Angeles, is studying stress, anxiety and depression, with Apple Watch and iPhone data for 3,000 volunteers being tracked in a study that starts this year. A pilot phase that began in 2020 recorded data from 150 participants.
Researchers will compare data captured from iPhone and Watch sensors with questionnaires participants fill out about how they feel, according to the report. They're also said to be measuring the level of the stress hormone cortisol in participants' hair follicles. Apple and UCLA announced the three-year study in August 2020.
Another research project is underway that may factor into this Apple project. The company and pharmaceutical firm Biogen said in January they're working on a two-year study to monitor cognitive function and perhaps spot mild cognitive impairment, which has the potential to develop into Alzheimer’s. The plan is to track around 20,000 participants, around half of whom have high risk of cognitive impairment.
If data from the studies lines up with symptoms of depression or anxiety, Apple could use it to create a feature that warns users if it sees signs of a mental health condition. The iPhone could prompt users to seek care, which could be important as early detection can improve quality of life in the long run.
Apple and its partners are in the early stages of this work, so it'll likely be a few years at least before the company adds mental health monitoring features to the iPhone. There's no guarantee the research will lead to such features at all.
Some previous studies have indicated people with certain conditions use devices differently than other folks. It's not yet clear whether developers can build algorithms that can detect mental health conditions reliably and accurately.
Still, there's no smoke without fire. Health has been a growing focus for Apple over the past few years, so there's a chance features based on this research will eventually emerge.
