With J&J deal to as­sess val­ue of Ap­ple watch in atri­al fib­ril­la­tion, tech gi­ant for­ti­fies its for­ay in­to health­care

Last week Ap­ple CEO Tim Cook said that in the fu­ture, when we all look back at his com­pa­ny, its great­est con­tri­bu­tion to mankind will have been about health. And now in a sig­nif­i­cant step to­wards Cook’s vi­sion, the phar­ma ma­jor John­son & John­son $JNJ has agreed to work with the Cu­per­ti­no-based tech gi­ant to test the di­ag­no­sis and out­comes of AFib pa­tients in a clin­i­cal tri­al.

The lat­est it­er­a­tion of Ap­ple Watch drew gasps of in­trigue when it was re­vealed the de­vice con­tained a sim­ple elec­tro­car­dio­gram able to de­tect signs of atri­al fib­ril­la­tion (AFib) — a com­mon heart con­di­tion that rais­es the risk of stroke and is typ­i­cal­ly seen in the el­der­ly. While the FDA signed off on the sen­sor — Ap­ple has been care­ful to un­der­score that the watch can’t di­ag­nose any­thing or re­place a doc­tor.

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