Tim Bajarin, writing for TIME:

I recently spent time with Apple executives involved with the Watch. I asked them to explain the real motivation for creating the device. Although Apple has made fashion and design a key cornerstone of its existence, it turns out that this was not at the heart of why they created this product.

The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs developed pancreatic cancer in 2004. He then spent a great deal of time with doctors and the healthcare system until his death in 2011. While that personal health journey had a great impact on Jobs personally, it turns out that it affected Apple’s top management, too. During this time, Jobs discovered how disjointed the healthcare system can be. He took on the task of trying to bring some digital order to various aspects of the healthcare system, especially the connection between patients, their data, and their healthcare providers.

Speaking of Apple Watch and heart problems, here’s the opposite end of the spectrum: the developers of Cardiogram are working with researchers of the UCSF Health eHeart Study to understand if heart rate data captured by smartwatches can generate insights to prevent strokes.

Heart researchers from the University of California, San Francisco as well as developers behind the heart rate-tracking app Cardiogram are teaming up to investigate if the tech built into smartwatches could be used to identify those at risk for a stroke or heart failure.

The research team will be honing in on one of the most commonly undiagnosed irregular heart conditions: atrial fibrillation, an irregular and often rapid heart rate also known as a type of arrhythmia.

Working within an observational study dubbed mRhythm, which kicked off on Wednesday, researchers will track data from participants using both the Apple Watch and Android Wear-based devices while looking for signs of irregular heart rates. These kinds of watches don’t have advanced electrocardiogram (EKG) machines inside. But they do include cheaper technology, such as LED lights, which can be used to measure blood flow in the wrist.

Like Apple’s ResearchKit, if these crowdsourced studies can lead to early diagnoses and better prevention, the impact of wearable devices on our lifestyle will be meaningful.

Those interested in the study can check out the details here.

Interesting idea for an Apple Watch band by AliveCor: the Kardia band will allow users to capture EKG directly from their wrist by placing a finger on the band for 30 seconds.

Users can record a single-lead EKG by simply touching Kardia Band’s integrated sensor that communicates with the Watch app, Kardia by AliveCor. The Atrial Fibrillation (AF) Detector then uses Kardia’s automated analysis process (algorithm) to instantly detect the presence of AF in an EKG, the most common cardiac arrhythmia and a leading cause of stroke. Also included is the Normal Detector, which indicates whether your heart rate and rhythm are normal, and the Unreadable Detector, which tells you when to retake an EKG so physicians receive only the highest quality recordings.

Users can also record voice memos on their Apple Watch to accompany each EKG that give doctors and caregivers a clearer picture of what was happening at the time of the recording — describing symptoms such as palpitations or external factors like caffeine intake. Kardia also integrates seamlessly with Apple’s Health app to include EKG data with steps and calorie intake to provide richer, personal analysis over time.

The Kardia band isn’t meant for fitness aficionados – rather, it’s designed for people with heart-related problems who would benefit from medical-grade EKG and the ability to store detailed reports and notes (including voice memos dictated on the Apple Watch). I’m curious to see if more companies (including Apple) will come up with Apple Watch bands with embedded sensors that can transfer data directly to the Watch (there were some rumors about this last year).

Also worth noting: AliveCor is run by Vic Gundotra (former Google VP and head of Google+) and they have a whole line of Kardia products (which also include smartphone cases for similar measurements).

Great story and app idea by David Walsh: dissatisfied with the presentation of heart rate data in Apple’s Health app, he created HeartWatch – a dashboard for your heart rate data. The app works best if you’re an Apple Watch wearer (you get readings every 10 minutes) and it includes features such as peak zones, timelines, and – my favorite – separate tabs for regular, waking, and workout heartbeats.

Heart Watch lets you see how your heart is beating across three simple views. Waking, Regular & Workout. Each of these views are isolated because, while you may want a higher heart rate during a workout, if your heart is racing when you aren’t doing any exercise then this is likely not a good thing and probably something you might want to show your medical practitioner.

David has shared the full story behind the creation of HeartWatch in a blog post:

Now I wanted to dig a bit further to find when and what was happening with my heart. Unfortunately, the Health app wasn’t very much help from here forward. There’s a summary graph, then to go any further, you have to read every single heart beat reading captured. With no search! Proverbial needle in haystack. So I looked around to see if there were any apps to help. Short answer. No. They seem to fall into finger on the camera apps, “fitness junkie” apps or just giving a simple average.

My research also made me realise a simple average is close to useless if you work out. Obviously your heart rate will be higher when you work out. This then throws out the daily average compared to days you don’t work out.

So I started a side project. Something that could show me what was going on. This then of course grew, as these things tend to do.

I took HeartWatch for a spin, and I like what David is doing. The app imported months of heart rate data from Health in less than a minute and it presented me with a clear calendar view of different reading types. HeartWatch can show percentage changes from previous readings, and it neatly breaks down a day’s data with colored charts and labels. I would love to see these kinds of average stats for weekly and monthly stats too, but, overall, HeartWatch is off to a good start.

Like David Smith’s Pedometer++, HeartWatch is another app that uses data from the Apple Watch in an interesting and useful way. If you care about your heart rate as measured by the Watch (and you should), I recommend giving HeartWatch a try.