Apple recently unveiled a number of new advances in its products, including one app that pushes the bounds of the possibilities for doctors to monitoring their patients remotely.

The app is called AirStrip, and it for a doctor’s Apple Watch. It has some general organizational abilities, like preparing the doctor for her next patient by showing the patient’s presenting complaint and a real-time stream of the patient’s vital signs.

More interesting (to this author) is the pairing of the app to another product – Sense4Baby – that has sensors a pregnant mother can attach to her belly. With the Sense4Baby connected to the AirStrip app, a doctor can monitor in real time the heart rate of the baby, the heart rate of the mother, and the mother’s contractions while the mother is outside of the hospital.

You can read an article on the new app here:

[Apple shows off AirStrip’s vital sign monitoring Apple Watch app](http://mobihealthnews.com/46687/apple-shows-off-airstrips-vital-sign-monitoring-apple-watch-app/)

Now, if the mother has the Sense4Baby sensor on her belly, and an Apple Watch on her wrist, the doctor can differentiate between the mother’s heart rate and the baby’s heart rate, as well as monitoring the timing of contractions.

Certainly, accurate information about the well being of a mother and her baby during pregnancy, including the early stages of labor, can be useful to providers as they make decisions about care. However, one caveat is the accuracy of the information. This author can contemplate a scenario when either the technology is not working appropriately, or the patient is not appropriately using the technology, or some combination of both, which might give the doctor falsely reassuring information, when in fact there may be a problem needing intervention.

If a doctor or other health care provider chooses to rely in part on such technology as part of her decision making process, patient safety dictates that the patient be properly trained to use the devices, including a full and frank discussion between the provider and patient about the technology, including the possibility of technology failure and need for a backup plan in that event.