When Apple announced new features for the AirPods Pro 2 at the company’s iPhone 16 event in September, the biggest reveal was their ability to work as a set of hearing aids . Now, it looks like Apple is going full throttle on transforming the AirPods into a handy health accessory. That’s because a newly granted patent has revealed that Apple is working on enabling future AirPods devices to detect certain heart pathologies that you might be suffering from, including an abnormal heartbeat, bradycardia or tachycardia.
This could perhaps work as a sort of ‘early warning system’ to alert you to heart issues that you might not be aware of. When armed with that knowledge, you could then visit a doctor for a proper diagnosis. According to the patent, Apple is considering building small, sensitive microphones into the AirPods.
The signal picked up by this microphone would be analyzed by the AirPods and used to determine your heart activity. If any of this activity appears to be unusual or problematic, you might receive an alert or notification about the problem. All this analysis would be carried out by some complex algorithms that may make use of machine learning to decide what exactly it is that the microphones have picked up.
This system might not be limited to just one microphone. In one instance, the patent explains that a second microphone could be installed in the AirPods, with the signal picked up by this second mic compared to that detected by the first microphone and.
