Chance Miller
The Apple Watch is being credited with saving the life of a doctor who fell
from the side of his house while power washing. Recounting his story to NBC
Chicago, Dr. Thomas Ficho not only credits the Apple Watch Series 5 with
saving his life, but he also explains why he tells all of his patients they
need to wear an Apple Watch.
Dr. Ficho was wearing his Apple Watch Series 5 while power washing bricks on
the side of his house. To reach higher, he decided to use the cover on the
window as a step. But once he stepped on it, the cover slipped and he
"plunged five feet into the basement egress well" and lost consciousness.
After the fall, the Apple Watch's fall detection feature kicked in and
called emergency services on Dr. Ficho's behalf.
" After three to five minutes, Ficho said he was able to climb out of the
well himself. When he did, there was a Glenview police officer standing on
his lawn. The officer asked him if he was OK or needed a paramedic. Ficho
said "no" but asked the officer how he knew the internist needed help. The
officer pointed to Ficho's watch.
"I was really surprised," Ficho said. "I didn't put it together immediately
that my watch was going to do that."
Fall detection first came to the Apple Watch with the Series 4. It is able
to detect when you fall and ask you if you are OK. If it sees that you are
unresponsive for one minute, it will automatically call emergency services
and share your current location. The feature is disabled by default for
users under the age of 65, but
Dr. Ficho says most of his patients are older, and a lot of them are over
the age of 60. Because of this, he says he tells all of them that they need
an Apple Watch on their wrist as often as possible.
"The majority of my patients are grown adults and a lot of them are over 60.
And I have told every single one of them that they need to have one of these
watches. I don't even work in Apple infrastructure, I work in PC
infrastructure. I'm not a crazy Apple person. This was an astounding event
to me. It was just so incredible this happened."
He recounted one situation where the Apple Watch could have helped save the
life of one of his patients:
" He recalled a patient who stepped out of the shower, fell in her bathroom,
broke her hip and could not get up. Her body was found three days later.
"All she needed was a watch," Ficho said, wishing the technology had existed
at the time.
How to enable Fall Detection
1. On iPhone, open the Watch app.
2. Scroll down and tap on Emergency SOS.
3. When toggling on Fall Detection, Apple warns that more physically active
users may trigger Fall Detection even when you haven't fallen. This is due
to high impact activity, and may appear as a fall.
4. Tap on Confirm if you're okay with that.
Fall Detection sounded much cooler when Apple originally announced it, but
it's understandable that Apple keeps it off, especially if they can't
guarantee that it works every time.
9to5Mac.
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