An Apple watch summoned medical help for a man in who had fallen unconscious in the city of Chandler, Arizona.

Apple introduced a fall detection feature on the Apple Watch Series 4 which will detect if its wearer takes a hard fall and then remains unresponsive to alerts from the watch for sixty seconds. If such a fall is detected the watch will trigger an computer voiced call to local emergency services that provides the wearer's latitude and longitude, and states that person has fallen and is not responding. Fall detection is enabled by default for users aged 65 and over, other users can switch the feature on manually.

When police officers paramedics from the Chandler Fire Department arrived they found that the man had fainted, causing his collapse. Without his watch summoning help he could have laid for some time until someone discovered him.

Local news station KATR has the full story.

Smart technology is beginning to demonstrate the role it could play in helping protect the more vulnerable in our society, but can you envisage care robots looking after your family? Or is that going a step too far?

Image credit: "A Review about Apple Watch Series 5" by cedrickhobson is licensed under CC BY 2.0