The ‘Heart Watch’ app is an innovative health technology breakthrough built exclusively for the Apple Watch, designed to detect early signs of heart attacks through continuous biometric monitoring. In this powerful video advertisement, viewers are confronted with short disturbing, hard-to-digest statistics about the frequency and fatality of cardiac arrests, forcing them to reflect on the invisible and indiscriminate danger heart attacks can cause. These rather poignant facts are delivered before a vast black background to ensure viewers are not distracted by external noise. The purpose behind the simplicity of darkness is to ensure viewers remain strictly focused on the objective seriousness of the subject matter. The constant, rhythmic sound of a steady heartbeat symbolises the app’s ability to remain intensely vigilant as it monitors for fatal abnormalities in real-time. This haunting heartbeat also serves as a metaphor for the app’s potential to save lives by acting well before potential symptoms become deadly. The Heart Watch app optimises the Apple Watch’s existing built-in ECG sensors, optical heart rate monitors, and machine learning, though relevant technological advancements, transforming a popular consumer device into a cutting-edge life-saving platform. This innovative integration perfectly exemplifies platformisation: expanding services within an existing digital ecosystem to maximise efficiency, reach, and innovation. By embedding itself into Apple’s established infrastructure, Heart Watch avoids the need for standalone medical devices, accelerating its accessibility. In doing so, it advances Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure demonstrating how digital technologies can drive inclusive healthcare, resilient technology, and feasible preventive solutions.
Platformisation can be defined as the use of programmable digital infrastructures that enable personalised interactions and services by systematically collecting, processing, monetising, and circulating user data. (Poell, Nieborg and van Dyck, 2019) Furthermore, the effectiveness of platforms, (more specifically in the context of services provided by mobile applications) platforms function as ‘extensions into the web, and the process in which third parties make their data platform-ready.’ (Helmund, 2015) Unlike traditional apps, platformised apps are designed to function as foundations for other services, features, and third-party integrations. (Poell, Nieborg and van Dyck, 2019) This shift allows an app to move past its main purpose and become a dynamic hub that connects relationships between different stakeholders. This can be achieved through collecting and processing large amounts of user data, ultimately delivering a personalised, and effective user experience. (Poell, Nieborg and van Dyck, 2019) For example, apps like Uber or Apple Health do not just offer transport services or health tracking. They create a complex system of users, services, and real-time data collection that is always evolving. (Bodle, 2011) Platformised apps also often use cloud computing, and data analytics to expand their functionality over time without needing to be rebuilt from scratch. (Bodle, 2011) Overall platformisation closes the gap between digital apps and infrastructure. A platformised app functions as a digital tool in which services are delivered making this model of development highly significant in areas like health, finance, and transport. Within these areas, digital apps are increasingly expected to be comprehensive, personalised, and deeply integrated into the users’ daily lives, transforming how services are accessed, delivered, and experienced.
The Apple Watch, more specifically, effectively facilitates platformisation by transforming the physicality of the human wrist into a central space for interconnected digital services. This shift shows how a simple wearable functions as a powerful platform capable of supporting a wide array of technological functions. By the end of 2020, more than 100 million people globally were wearing an Apple Watch, positioning it as Apple’s 4th largest product platform after the iPhone, iPad, and Mac (Cybart, 2021). In the United States alone, 35% of iPhone users also wore an Apple Watch, compared to a global average of just 10%. This highlights how the Apple Watch possesses a strong market penetration and platform influence in specific geographies (Cybart, 2021). Importantly, the Apple Watch extends its role as just a wearable device. It is deeply connected within Apple’s wider technological ecosystem, seamlessly interacting with devices like iPhones, Macs, AirPods, and HomePods. This integration allows users to control and access a wide range of services: from messages and music to smart home functions and biometric information. All of these services function through a single, wrist-worn interface. The Apple Watch has also evolved into a health and wellness platform, offering features like heart rate monitoring, fall detection, ECG, and blood oxygen tracking. These additions reinforce its value not just as a device, but as a central hub for digital health and security services. Apple further strengthens the platform model through user customisation. Wearers have the ability to personalise the experience with interchangeable bands, dynamic watch faces, and third-party app extensions. This functions to encourage long-term user engagement and enhances user continuity across other Apple products. If global adoption eventually reflects the high usage rates seen in the United States, the Apple Watch base could grow to 350 million users by 2026 (Rogerson, 2021). This trajectory highlights how platformisation not only supports user experience but also increases market reach and redefines the everyday interaction with digital technology.
The ‘Heart Watch’ application will be integrated into the existing Apple Watch model and serves as an effective example of how a single app can operate as a platform, allowing real-time heart attack detection. In this innovative Apple Watch model, the Heart Watch App becomes the central platform by which life-saving health monitoring is made possible. Here, the Apple Watch exists as the essential physical medium that allows this platform to operate. This shows platformisation in action through the layering of digital services onto a single mobile, wearable device that enables seamless interaction between hardware, software, and data collection. Heart Watch will not exist as an extension feature of the Apple Watch, it would exist as a standalone, innovative platform in itself. Unlike the existing Apple health technologies that monitor general heart activity, no current Apple service can detect actual heart attacks. Heart Watch would fill this critical gap, creating a significant advancement in platformisation by creating a dedicated service built entirely around the real-time analysis of life-threatening cardiac events. By radically enhancing the Apple Watch’s existing ECG sensors, accelerometers, and optical heart rate monitors, the app would continuously collect biometric data, process it through sophisticated algorithms, and automatically call emergency protocols when clear heart attack symptoms are detected. In this model, the Apple Watch transcends the simplicity of a wearable smart device. It becomes the essential medium by which the Heart Watch platform functions. As a result, Heart Watch can only exist within the Apple ecosystem, as it is reliant on the Apple Watch to deliver its value, transforming the wrist-worn device into a critical health intervention tool. This positions the app as the platform, with the Apple Watch serving as the access point that allows its innovative, life-saving potential. Lastly, Heart Watch integrates seamlessly with Apple’s ecosystem by syncing and sharing the collected data with Apple Health, iPhones, and relevant emergency services. Again, the app becomes the central platform, turning biometric data into life-saving insights. By embedding critical health functions into a wearable device, Heart Watch redefines platformisation as an almost invisible, essential interface for cardiac arrest intervention.
Heart Watch aligns closely with Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, particularly Target 9.5 and Target 9.1 Target 9.5 calls for the enhancement of scientific research and the upgrading of technological capabilities across industrial sectors, especially in developing countries. (Un.org, 2023) Heart Watch effectively reflects this target by introducing a scientifically advanced platform that uses machine learning to biometric data, transforming wearable technology into a life saving health innovation. Heart Watch aims to represent a significant upgrade in digital health capabilities. Considering the current Apple Watch cannot yet detect real-time heart attacks, the Heart Watch app aims to close this gap in technological ability. Target 9.1 highlights the need to develop quality, reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure to support economic development and human well-being. (Un.org, 2023) Heart Watch contributes to this target by significantly increasing access to emergency health care through the existing Apple Watch, making early intervention highly accessible. As a result, Heart Watch will ease the pressures faced by traditional health systems effectively saving more lives at a faster rate. By integrating into Apple’s existing digital infrastructure such as: iCloud, HealthKit, and emergency contact integration, Heart Watch creates a highly resilient platform that enhances human well-being on a global scale. Together, these specific SDG targets are embedded in the design and purpose of Heart Watch, which facilitates increased accessibility, strengthens digital health infrastructure, and reflects how modern technological innovation can support sustainable development goals. Through its integration into an existing global product, Heart Watch advances technological innovation while significantly expanding access to critical health services, supporting both scientific progress and human-centred infrastructure development.
In summary, Heart Watch successfully encapsulates how platformisation can drive meaningful health innovation while incorporating Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. By transforming the Apple Watch into a platform for real-time heart attack detection, the app showcases the power of incorporating life-saving services into existing digital ecosystems. This integration not only expands the Apple Watch’s functionality but also eliminates the need for separate medical devices, increasing accessibility. Also aligned with SDG Target 9.5, Heart Watch supports scientific advancement through its use of machine learning and biometric data analysis. It also contributes to Target 9.1 by strengthening digital health infrastructure by facilitating immediate emergency responses. As a platform, Heart Watch turns the wrist-worn Apple Watch into a critical intervention tool making it discreet, continuous, and highly connected to user wellbeing. This model demonstrates how technological innovation can enhance public health outcomes while supporting sustainable, inclusive, and resilient digital infrastructure at a global scale.
Refrences:
Bodle, R. (2011). REGIMES OF SHARING. Information Communication & Society, [online] 14(3), pp.320–337. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2010.542825. [Accessed 28 May 2025].
Cybart, N. (2021). Apple Watch Is Now Worn on 100 Million Wrists. [online] Above Avalon. Available at: https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2021/2/11/apple-watch-is-now-worn-on-100-million-wrists [Accessed 28 May 2025].
Heart Research Institute. (2021). Heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular disease in Australia: Statistics and facts. [online] Available at: https://www.hri.org.au/health/learn/cardiovascular-disease/heart-attack-stroke-and-cardiovascular-disease-in-australia-statistics-and-facts [Accessed 30 May 2025].
Heart Foundation.org.au. (2017). Key Statistics: Heart attack | Heart Foundation. [online] Available at: https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/your-heart/evidence-and-statistics/key-statistics-heart-attack [Accessed 30 May 2025].
Helmond, A. (2015). The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready. [Accessed 30 May 2025].
Kochanek, K., Murphy, S., Xu, J. and Arias, E. (2019). National Vital Statistics Reports Deaths: Final Data for 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf.
Poell, T., Nieborg, D. and José van Dijck (2019). Platformisation. Internet Policy Review, [online] 8(4). doi:https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1425. [Accessed 28 May 2025].
Rogerson, J. (2021). Apple Watches are used by over 100 million people, but that’s just the beginning. [online] TechRadar. Available at: https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-watches-are-used-by-over-100-million-people-but-thats-just-the-beginning [Accessed 28 May 2025].
Thomas, J. (2023). Heart Disease: Facts, Statistics, and You. [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/health/heart-disease/statistics#at-risk [Accessed 30 May 2025].
Nicholas Steven 
Leave a comment