Credit: Paul Weeden

Debbie Copeland-Bloom is alive now thanks to her smartwatch.

“I know at least one person who went out and bought a watch because of what happened to me,” Copeland-Bloom told KJRH.

Whether you’re getting a smartwatch for fitness reasons like tracking your steps or for health reasons like tracking your heart rate, rhythm, and blood pressure, smartwatches are now confirmed to be potential lifesavers. Copeland-Bloom says her smartwatch is the reason she’s still alive today.

“When we caught this, my heart function was at 25 percent,” said Copeland-Bloom.

She says her ticker wasn’t receiving the correct electrical signals, which affected how it pumped blood. However, she says she had no symptoms.

“I didn’t feel anything,” said Copeland-Bloom.

Copeland-Bloom altered the settings on her smartwatch to show “beats per minute” (BPM). She says the numbers she saw were troubling.

“It was saying that my heart was at 155-165 BMP all the time,” she said.

That’s when she decided to go out and buy another device that also tracked her heart rate. Copeland-Bloom says she bought a second device because, “I absolutely did not believe I had a high heart rate.” But it turns out that second device backed up the first smartwatch. Copeland-Bloom then decided to call her doctor, who promptly sent her to the ER.

Cardiologist Jefferson Burroughs says his patient’s smartwatch helped them catch a potentially dangerous case of arrhythmia and may possibly be one of the first cases of a smartwatch saving a person’s life.

“That’s probably not a real high number just yet, but I think that number is going to grow as access to these devices increases,” Dr. Burroughs said.

Now smartwatches are helping to inform physicians of their patients’ irregular heartbeats by transmitting the reported information back to them.

“These type of devices probably much more frequently help us manage arrhythmias that we already know exist,” said Dr. Burroughs.

And because it’s real life data (not just the data shown in doctor’s offices), Copeland-Bloom says she now knows it’s really working.

But while these smartwatches can help save lives, it’s important to note that these devices can have a false positive rate of up to 30 percent. That means it’s still crucial to consult with your doctor about any heart-related issues despite the watches serving as good tools to warn you of any health irregularities.