When Apple announced two major new healthcare features this week, it billed them both as terrific innovations that may well keep us alive.
Later this year, its Watch will be able to automatically call emergency services if it detects you have suffered a fall and are no longer moving. And it will also let you know if you have heart problems and should perhaps visit your doctor as soon as possible.
Other devices have offered similar functions in the past, albeit in less elegantly presented gadgets. But with an estimated 50 million Apple Watches out there already, there are concerns about the pressures it may bring to already-strained healthcare systems.
The result may be even more calls to emergency services and, according to one of Britain’s leading surgeons, a new wave of technology-driven hypochondria.
