Doctors are harnessing the potential of smartwatches and using them to monitor patient health and progress

More than 200 million people around the world wear smartwatches. But your Fitbit and Apple Watch can do more than relay your messages, listen to music, or track your steps. Your smartwatch might be smarter than you think.

Whether it’s too fast or too slow, when a heartbeat is off, it can mean trouble.

“Patients who develop atrial fibrillation can have some pretty serious consequences, especially when it comes to strokes,” said electrophysiologist Dr. Matthew McKillip.

But he said you might already be using one of the newest tools in the fight against A-Fib, your smartwatch.

“Patients now have the ability to record arrhythmias in real time,” he said.

A Stanford study of 400,000 people found that Apple Watches were able to correctly identify 84% of A-fib cases. A smartwatch also helps doctors monitor patients before and after surgery.

“Which will track step count, stride length, heart rate, and a variety of other data points that we don’t normally track as a surgeon,” said orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Declaire.

Declaire is part of an Apple Watch study that gives him real-time daily data on his patients before and after knee replacements.

“A month before the surgery, they started sending me educational information and exercises to do, and they track how you’re doing with your exercises,” said knee patient Denise Erhart.

And people with diabetes like Sydnie Stephens-Boussard can monitor glucose levels without that dreaded pinprick.

“So when I go too high, my watch will go off. And then when I go too low, it will go off too,” she said.

And other studies suggest that wearables may also be able to detect other illnesses like colds, flu, and even Lyme disease.

“It’s actually something that in my own practice has a direct impact on care,” McKillop said.

Smartwatches are also becoming popular for monitoring older family members, as most have detection technology that will call 911 in the event of a fall.

Now that the technology is in use, McKillop says there will need to be more focus on ways to make health information secure and privacy compliant across the healthcare industry.