Next Year’s Apple AirPods Could Detect Heart Diseases, According to a New Patent

Apple announced some new features for the AirPods Pro 2 during its iPhone 16 launch event. One of the biggest highlights was AirPods Pro 2 ability to work as a set of hearing aids with iOS 18. Apple never fails to impress its fans with accessibility and health features. Now, the giant is planning to transform its AirPods into a handy health accessory. According to a newly granted patent, Apple is testing future AirPods models to detect certain heart diseases like abnormal heartbeat, bradycardia, or tachycardia.

The patent suggests that Apple might build small, sensitive microphones into the AirPods. Processing the microphone signals would be used to determine the heart activity. If your heart activity appears to be problematic or unusual, you might receive an alert or notification about the same. All this microphone signal processing and analysis would be carried out by some complex predictive algorithms based on Machine Learning. This could detect the signals or characteristics compromised in the heart activity, which a user might not be aware of. With the early indications, a user can visit a doctor for a proper diagnosis.

It’s worth knowing that the detection system might not be limited to just one microphone. The patent also explains that Apple may install a second microphone in the AirPods. The signal detected by this second microphone will be compared to the signal picked up by the first microphone to determine if a user is experiencing any unusual heart activity. Apart from unusual heartbeats, the future AirPods could also detect blockage in the carotid artery using an artificial neural network that takes into account the first and second heart activity.

In the past few months, we’ve heard rumors that Apple is gearing up to incorporate advanced health-tracking features into AirPods, including temperature sensing and ambient light sensors to detect heart activity. The latest patent sheds some light on Apple’s concrete plans to deliver life-saving health features.

The heart pathologies detection feature will be implemented in AirPods Pro 3 and the next-gen Powerbeats Pro, which are likely to arrive next year. The reason why Apple could launch AirPods with a heart disease detection feature next year is a code in the iOS 18 RC, as spotted by 9to5Mac.

A string in the code reads, “Wear both earbuds during workouts to track and send your heart rate to Apple Health. Manage in Bluetooth settings.”

Bear in mind that it’s just a patent. Apple might experiment with different ideas and might not implement this concept on AirPods. Considering how AirPods and Apple Watch have evolved from luxury pieces to useful health & fitness accessories, we can expect Apple to actually make this concept a reality.