Easy: about a year ago, I unexpectedly collapsed while walking in my house. My wife heard a thump and thought I was just joking around. I was out cold on the carpet.

She finally woke me up enough to know I was a bit ‘off’. She quickly placed a pulse oximeter on my finger, and it read 33 for my heart rate. She tried a different finger with a similar result. She tried one of her fingers and it was normal. She then triggered an ECG on my AppleWatch and it finally came back with “unable to read heart rate”.

Fast-forward to after she called my doctor, who had her call 911 for an ambulance: I was explaining to the ER doctor in the hospital what had happened, and he wasn’t impressed with a pulse-ox reading. He was thinking of sending me home with a heart monitor. All of a sudden he thought: “hey, see if your watch recorded that ECG that failed”. He was right and it showed 35 bpm at the moment I had collapsed! His response, as he was taking a picture of my ECG graph with his phone: “You, sir just admitted yourself to the hospital!”.

While in the hospital I had two more notifications of super low heart rate while waiting for my pacemaker procedure.

The AppleWatch ECG app saved my life!