Fall detection on the Apple Watch refused to let a woman die

Usually, when we write about the Apple Watch saving a life, we are talking about the heart rate monitor, the ECG feature, or the SP02 monitor that measures a person's Blood Oxygen rate. But according to Reddit user "xanderpy" (via AppleInsider) the Apple Watch feature credited with saving his mother's life was fall detection. This feature recognizes when a person wearing an Apple Watch has suffered a severe fall and if there is no response from the user, emergency help is summoned.

The Reddit user explained how his mom was in a hotel on a business trip when a pain in her chest got her concerned. She then collapsed, face first, on the hotel room floor. A co-worker on the way to her room found her and when the co-worker called 911, she was told that emergency help had already been called. As it turned out, it was the Apple Watch worn by the Redditor's mom that called for help after she had fallen and it did not detect any motion.

As it turned out, having the Apple Watch call for help immediately might have been the difference between life and death since the patient had suffered a ruptured aorta and time was of the essence. Successful surgery was performed. Thanks to the Apple Watch's fall detection feature, the Reddit subscriber's mother survived something that is "commonly fatal."

The fall detection feature is available on the Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 4 or later. When the user falls and the watch detects this, it taps the user's arms, sounds an alert, and shows an alert in the display. At this point, the user can choose to contact emergency services or dismiss the alarm by pressing the Digital Crown, tapping "Close" in the upper-left corner of the display, or tapping on the "I'm OK" button. If the watch detects that the user hasn't moved for about a minute, it will call emergency services automatically.

As "xanderpy" wrote in his Reddit post, "I see stories like this sometimes and think that they are exaggerated for publicity or possibly just made up. I obviously no longer think this. Apple technology has a firm grip on me and my entire family already but this... this was something else. This made me an Apple user for life and showed me that technology like this can truly save lives."