The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application on Thursday, revealing how a new feature on the Apple Watch and iPhone could save lives. The patent-pending technology allows the device to identify a medical emergency (say, a heart attack) and call 911.
While the patent, originally filed in September 2015, does not explicitly mention a particular device, the description drops hints as to how the technology will work with existing gadgets.
“An occurrence of one or more ‘care events’ is detected by an electronic device monitoring environmental data and/or user data from one or more sensors,” wrote Apple. “The electronic device transmits one or more alerts regarding the detected occurrence to at least one other electronic device. In some cases, the electronic device may cooperate with at least one other electronic device in monitoring, detecting, and/or transmitting.”
According to Apple’s patent, the device would respond according to the emergency. A lower level threat would call a family member while a more severe incident would call 911.
“Care events may include a car crash, a bike accident, a medical emergency such as a heart attack or an aneurysm, separation of a child from the child’s caregiver, a dementia patient becoming lost, an avalanche, a fall, a mugging, a fire, and/or any other event for which a user may require medical, police, family, fire rescue, and/or other kind of assistance,” reads the patent.
To counter false alarms, the system has a hierarchy in its care lists and will ask the user to respond first, if they are lucid.
The care detection and alert patent application names Apple engineers Martha E. Hankey and James Foster as the creators.
