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Why doctors are worried about the Apple Watch EKG

Why doctors are worried about the Apple Watch EKG

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More data isn’t always better

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The latest Apple Watch features an advanced heart-monitoring technology called electrocardiogram (EKG) that can tell you if there’s something off about your heart rhythm. Good news for our health, right?

Not exactly, doctors say. This might be a case where more data is not better. In fact, more data might lead perfectly healthy people to make unnecessary doctors’ visits that strain our health care system.

To understand the new feature, The Verge visited the University of California, San Francisco to test the Apple Watch EKG against a professional lab EKG. Then, we spoke with experts like Dr. Gregory Marcus of UCSF and Dr. Seth Landefeld of the University of Alabama at Birmingham to learn about the upsides and downsides of having so much information available on our wrists.

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