Apple Watch could help people with treating a painful condition associated with sickle cell disease, according to research reported by MyHealthyApple.

The research, conducted by Duke University’s Day Hospital, indicates that the Apple Watch could help people who experience vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs), a complication attributed to sickle cell disease that can potentially result in hospitalization in cases of grievous pain.

Researchers enrolled sickle cell disease patients admitted for a VOC into the Day Hospital between July 2021 and September 2021 into the study, providing them with an Apple Watch Series 3 for the duration of their visit. 15,683 data points in total from the Apple Watch’s heart rate, heart rate variability, and calories were collected and compared with pain scores and vital signs from the hospital’s electronic medical record, creating a machine learning model to predict VOCs.

The research concludes that machine learning models created using health data collected by Apple Watch can discover trends to preemptively predict pain among people with sickle cell disease, thus providing an early warning sign and enabling treatment without seeking hospitalization.

The researchers further hail the Apple Watch as a “novel and feasible approach and presents a low-cost method that could benefit clinicians and individuals with sickle cell disease in the treatment of VOCs.”