The Apple Watch will be involved in Two Medical Studies in the coming months

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Early Monday, it was announced that the newest Apple Watch will be involved in two upcoming medical studies to help improve the lives of individuals with the below disorders.

Apple teams up with the Zimmer Biomet for Clinical Study on Joint Replacement:

WARSAW, Ind., Oct. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc., a global leader in musculoskeletal healthcare, is working with Apple by using Apple Watch and iPhone to change the patient journey for two of the most common surgeries Americans undergo each year – knee and hip replacement. This collaboration has yielded Zimmer Biomet mymobility™, an app that uses Apple Watch to facilitate a new level of connection between patients and their surgical care teams, which can immediately impact the journey patients experience when they undergo these procedures.

In addition to the app, Zimmer Biomet is commencing the mymobility Clinical Study, designed to study the app’s impact on patient outcomes and overall costs for joint replacement patients. During this research study, patients will use Zimmer Biomet mymobility with Apple Watch as they progress through their hip or knee replacement journey. Researchers will combine patient-reported feedback with continuous health and activity data from Apple Watch to provide new insights into the power of the Zimmer Biomet mymobility app to impact the standard of care for these common surgeries. The study is launching today and has the possibility to enroll as many as 10,000 patient participants in the United States.

“We are incredibly excited to work with Apple to transform the knee and hip replacement experience for patients and surgeons,” said Bryan Hanson, President and CEO, Zimmer Biomet. “At Zimmer Biomet, we are committed to improving care decisions through digital health and we are thrilled to launch one of the largest evidence-gathering clinical studies in orthopaedic history.”

“We believe one of the best ways to empower consumers is by giving them the ability to use their health and activity information to improve their own care,” said Jeff Williams, Chief Operating Officer, Apple. “We are proud to enable knee and hip replacement patients to use their own data and share it with their doctors seamlessly, so that they can participate in their care and recovery in a way not previously possible through traditional in-person visits. This solution will connect consumers with their doctors continuously, before and after surgery.”

More than one million knee and hip replacements occur annually in the U.S. This number is expected to grow to 3.5 million by 2035, yet standardization of care and recovery for the procedures is still lacking and costs to the U.S. healthcare system continue to rise. Zimmer Biomet mymobility and Apple Watch will act as a virtual and continuous care team on a patient’s wrist. Patients will be provided with support and guidance as they prepare for and recover from these surgeries, while surgeons will be delivered continuous data to optimize care. The new Zimmer Biomet mymobility app has several features that use both Apple Watch and iPhone through the joint replacement journey, including the ability for surgeons to send education and therapy reminders directly to the patient’s Apple Watch. The app also allows surgeons to monitor patient activity levels throughout the days and weeks while they are preparing for and recovering from surgery.

To learn more about the mymobility Clinical Study, visit zbmymobility.com/clinical-study.

Apple, Apple Watch and iPhone are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc.

About the Company
Founded in 1927 and headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, Zimmer Biomet is a global leader in musculoskeletal healthcare. We design, manufacture and market orthopaedic reconstructive products; sports medicine, biologics, extremities and trauma products; office-based technologies; spine, craniomaxillofacial and thoracic products; dental implants; and related surgical products.

We collaborate with healthcare professionals around the globe to advance the pace of innovation. Our products and solutions help treat patients suffering from disorders of, or injuries to, bones, joints or supporting soft tissues. Together with healthcare professionals, we help millions of people live better lives.

We have operations in more than 25 countries around the world and sell products in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit www.zimmerbiomet.com.

Contacts:

Media
Jon Siegal
781-684-6557
jon.siegal@mslgroup.com

SOURCE Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc.

Apple to donate 1,000 Apple Watches for Eating Disorder Study:

(Via Reuters): The Apple Watch is in use by scientists across the country to monitor everything from the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease to postpartum depression. Now, researchers are aiming to see how well the device can track eating disorders.

The University of North Carolina’s medical school will soon be starting a study called BEGIN, which stands for Binge Eating Genetics Initiative, to better understand overeating. People with binge eating disorder often eat large amounts of food uncontrollably in a small period of time. Those who follow with compensatory behavior like purging or excessive exercise are typically diagnosed with bulimia nervosa.

Cynthia Bulik, founding director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders at UNC and one of the researchers behind BEGIN, is hoping to recruit 1,000 participants, ages 18 or older, who have experience with either binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa. Once they’re enrolled, they can sign up with a mobile app called Recovery Record, which is designed to help users log their thoughts and feelings in a digital format, and share that information with their doctor ahead of a session. It requires about 10 minutes a day of participation.

Each participant will be given a free watch, courtesy of Apple, and researchers will monitor their heart rate using the device’s sensor over the course of a month to see if there are spikes before binge eating episodes. It’s likely that a binging and purging episode would cause some biological change that would show up in the Apple Watch data, according to Bulik.

“We need to collect data from a whole lot of people to see what it looks like,” said Bulik. “We want to know if it has a biological and behavioral signature.”

Brian Baucom and Jonathan Butner, researchers from the University of Utah, are helping with the statistical modeling once the data are collected.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

The group of researchers is going after a big and underfunded problem. At least 30 million people in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.

The data might provide a way for the researchers to predict binge eating incidents before they happen. That could lead to a follow-up study about where some sort of alert might help.

“We’re interested to find out what happens in the time period leading up to the binge and the purge,” said Jenna Tregarthen, CEO of Recovery Record. “And we hope we can anticipate and ultimately change the course of that episode.”

In addition to helping out with the heart rate piece of the study, those who enroll will receive tests to analyze their genetics and bodily bacteria (or microbiome) so the researchers can better understand the root causes of the disease. A start-up called UBiome is sending free at-home testing kits to participants and will do the analysis.