Siri Saves Woman’s Life, Apple Watch Takes a Backseat

Apple has been consistently working on incorporating health and fitness tracking capabilities into its range of products, including the iPhone and Apple Watch. These features, such as Crash Detection, Fall Detection, heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen monitoring, and ECG, have proven to be life-saving by notifying users of health irregularities and even contacting emergency services. In a recent incident in the UK, Siri also played a heroic role in assisting an iPhone owner.

What happened

One fine morning, Shailja Ambrose woke up and went about her daily routine as usual, reports Sun UK. But soon after, he suddenly passed out in the toilet. Fortunately for Shailja, she had her iPhone with her and through it she was able to contact her colleague, who called the emergency center. The National Health Service (NHS) took him to the nearest hospital, where he was diagnosed with cerebrovascular disease.

For the uninitiated, a brain aneurysm is a thin spot in an artery in the brain caused by a weakness in the blood vessel wall, according to the NHS. If it ruptures, it can cause subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening condition.

Amazingly, Shailja’s mother Kusum Chaturved and sister Neerja also had the same condition but had no idea about it! Luckily for Shailja, she survived, but only after spending 46 days in the intensive care unit. The rest of his family received treatment soon after and are now doing well.

Previous cases

This is not the first time that an Apple device has saved its users. In January, the Apple Watch saved a user’s life by alerting them to an irregular heart rhythm that, after medical diagnosis, showed that the user had been lying flat for 19 seconds while sleeping! Just a month later, it saved another life by alerting the wearer to a beating heart, which on examination turned out to be a severe GI bleed.

However, it should be noted that although these devices may alert the user to health abnormalities, they are not medical devices and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care.