- 26 mins ago
- AppleWatch
- Medhi Naitmazi
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The health features of the Apple Watch are often highlighted by Apple and customers who detect heart problems in time, but the watch’s drop detection is also very useful. Raylene Hackenwerth, a 71-year-old woman living in St. Petersburg, Florida, told her story to WFTS Tampa Bay, detailing how the Apple Watch helped her in a time of distress…
Apple Watch fall detection to the rescue
Earlier this month, Ms Hackenwerth fell at home while alone, but the Apple Watch’s fall detection function alerted her son, Jason, and alerted first responders.
The WFTS media report explains:
It’s the Apple Watch that Jason gave his mom for Christmas so she could track his workouts. But this activity was not planned. The 71-year-old grandmother had fallen, hard. The watch detected the fall and called 9-1-1 on its own. Joshua Stevens, one of the rescuers who responded to the call, said a distress call from a watch is quite unique.
In a case like this, the Apple Watch sends geolocation, latitude and longitude to help find the person easily.
When first responders arrived, they found Hackenwerth “nearly unconscious and badly battered.” She was rushed to the local hospital, where doctors eventually discovered the cause of the fall, “a lump in her lungs that was cancerous.” The grandmother then explained that without the fall and the Apple Watch, she would certainly not have known that she had the onset of lung cancer.
Ms Hackenwerth is now waiting for treatment and is taking advantage of her situation to thank her son for giving her an Apple Watch and its fall detection function, which she and her son “did not know existed” before this accident.
Since the Apple Watch 4, the fall detection function is available but disabled by default for people under 65 years old. You can activate it by going to the watch settings from the Watch app on the iPhone.
This feature intelligently detects sudden falls and automatically calls emergency services if the person does not dismiss the alert within one minute. If the person’s emergency contact information is provided, this contact will be notified by text message and geolocation at the time of the fall. If you want to give a gift, know that the Apple Watch SE is on sale at only €261 with the famous function.