Apple Watch Medical Alert Review

The Apple Watch (Series 4 and later) has been one of our favorite fitness trackers for seniors for years, and it’s also a great medical alert device thanks to additions like automatic fall detection, an SOS button, and a slew of heart-monitoring features. Best of all, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee to get personalized assistance during an emergency—your medical ID profile is shared with dispatchers automatically.

The only drawback is that none of these settings are turned on by default, so it takes a bit of time to make sure your Apple Watch will work as expected during an emergency.

The Apple Watch features an SOS button that calls emergency services anywhere in the world and also shares location data with your emergency contacts.

But you have to do a lot of setup in the Watch app before any of this works. For example, the watch can’t call for help if it doesn’t have cellular capabilities and your iPhone isn’t nearby. You can default to Wi-Fi calling when cell service isn’t available, but only if you’ve toggled Wi-Fi calling on in the app—and if you’re connected to a known Wi-Fi network. 

For best results, pay about $10 a month for your Apple Watch to have its own cellular connection. And don’t forget to toggle SOS calls on via your iPhone’s Watch app.

Finally, you need to set up emergency contacts. You can designate someone as an emergency contact through your address book or through the medical ID feature. These folks will be notified when you use the SOS button, and they’ll also keep receiving your location data until you tell the Apple Watch to stop sending it. 

Apple is careful to explain in its user manuals that this watch isn’t a perfectly calibrated medical device, so you shouldn’t rely on it to give diagnoses or detect a heart attack. Make sure you use common sense—if you don’t feel well, get help, no matter what the Apple Watch says about your heart.

That said, when all goes well, the Apple Watch can give you some helpful information about your heart, including irregular rhythm and abnormally high or low resting heart rates. You can turn on notifications and set heart rate parameters through the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

There’s also an ECG (echocardiogram) app that records your heart rhythm and lets you manually log any other symptoms, making it easy to share data with your doctor.

Just like a traditional medical ID bracelet, the Apple Watch’s medical ID lists critical health information that helps emergency responders give appropriate treatment. The advantage of the Apple Watch’s medical ID is that you can list a lot more information than the typical medical ID bracelet.

Here’s what you can add to your medical ID on the iPhone Health app:

You can also choose to allow how your Medical ID is shared. It can appear on your Apple Watch or iPhone’s lock screen so that emergency responders can access it without your passcode. You can also have it shared with dispatchers during an emergency call, but only in “supported areas”—which means not every dispatch center may be equipped to receive this information from Apple. 

Emergency contacts are automatically notified when you use the SOS button to call emergency services. They also receive your current location. 

The Apple Watch tracks all kinds of health and fitness data, including the number of steps you take each day and your overall cardio fitness. You don’t have to buy a medical alert and a fitness tracker if you get the Apple Watch.

Other fitness-related information at your fingertips includes the following:

• Six-minute walk distance
• Walking speed
• Step length
• Double support time (the amount of time both feet are on the ground)
• Walking asymmetry

If you wear the Apple Watch to bed and it has at least a 30% charge, it also tracks how long you sleep each night and your respiratory rate throughout your sleep cycle. 

This isn’t a comprehensive list of everything the Apple Health iPhone app can do—just what’s available on the Apple Watch. On the iPhone app, you can keep track of health records, sync the app to data from smart blood pressure monitors, scales, posture trainers, and other smart devices to track health data in one place.

The Apple Watch isn’t just a trendy gadget. It holds its own against other medical alert devices thanks to automatic fall detection and a shareable medical ID profile—none of which costs extra. 

Because it doesn’t connect with a caregiver app or professional monitoring center, the Apple Watch isn’t ideal for people with memory problems or those who need ongoing check-ins and support. See our other recommendations for medical alert watches, medical alerts with GPS, and senior wearables.

• Best Medical Alert Systems
• Most Affordable Medical Alert Systems
• Types of Medical Alert Systems and How They Work
• How to Choose a Medical Alert System
• Best Safety Devices for Seniors