Samsung Galaxy Watch Will Let You Detect Early Heart Failure

Samsung’s next health upgrade for Galaxy Watch, it says, could flag early signs of heart failure — pushing consumer wearables further into clinical territory. Now the company is developing an AI-powered feature that would screen for left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) through a watch-based electrocardiogram, a move that could turn a 30-second wrist reading into something far more dramatic: a red flag for a serious cardiac condition.

Why Detecting LVSD Early Matters for Heart Health

LVSD — also known as heart failure with reduced ejection fraction — happens when the heart’s left lower chamber is too weak to pump blood effectively. It is involved in about half of heart failure cases worldwide, the cardiology societies said, and an important cause of hospitalizations and death. According to the World Heart Federation, tens of millions across the world suffer from heart failure; many are unaware they have the condition until symptoms become acute.

Early detection can change outcomes.

Clinicians typically diagnose it with an echocardiogram and treat it using evidence-based therapies that lower hospitalizations and improve survival. And a screening nudge on the wrist could encourage earlier evaluation for those inclined to brush off vague sensations of fatigue, shortness of breath, or swelling.

How the Galaxy Watch Spots Risk Using AI and ECG

For its part, Samsung is running an AI model on top of the Galaxy Watch’s single-lead ECG. The algorithm — created in partnership with Korean health-tech company Medical AI — was trained on labeled data from standard 12-lead clinical ECGs before being reworked to detect the signs of LVSD from the single-lead signal generated by the watch. In practice, you record a short ECG on the watch and the accompanying app analyzes the waveform to look for patterns that suggest reduced pumping function.

Single-lead recordings contain much less information than a 12-lead ECG, but subtle timing and morphology cues that humans may overlook can be used by machine learning models to make accurate predictions of heart function. Mayo Clinic researchers showed that AI models achieve high accuracy in detecting low ejection fraction from these complex signals, and several follow-up studies show that single-lead data remain informative when the model is properly tuned. The promise is a useful screen, not an absolute diagnosis.

Regulatory Status and Rollout Plans for the Feature

Samsung says the feature has been authorized by South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, and analysis is done through an app called AiTiA LVSD-1L. That green light at home is an early step; wider releases will probably depend on regulatory pathways in each region, including reviews by the FDA in the United States and notified bodies in the European Union.

Availability will, as with other health features, depend on market and device compatibility. Samsung says it will look to integrate the feature into its system-level health experience following initial approvals, which would position it alongside existing ECG and blood pressure tools in supported regions.

How It Stacks Up in the Wearable Health Landscape

Wearables already screen for atrial fibrillation and can alert users when their heart rhythm demonstrates an irregular pattern that may merit further attention. Pushing on to LVSD screening gets one into a tougher clinical problem, more typically an imaging than rhythm problem. AI models have been evaluated on ECGs from smartwatches on different platforms to predict low ejection fraction and have shown promising accuracy in feasibility studies by academic consortia. Samsung’s decision indicates that the research is maturing toward real-world use.

The competitive context matters. If ECGs from smartwatches can consistently identify those at risk of LVSD, the watches might become a low-cost triage tool, directing users to confirmatory echocardiography. That wouldn’t be a replacement for clinical care, but it could significantly increase the rate of detection of silent heart failure, one of the oldest voids in cardiology.

Benefits and Constraints for Users Considering Screening

For at-risk users — for example, older adults or people with hypertension, diabetes, coronary disease, or past chemotherapy — one of these nudges might trigger conversations that could come just in time. Early therapy can limit exacerbations and enhance quality of life, and there is growing support from insurers for remote monitoring of chronic cardiac conditions.

But screening is not diagnosis. A false positive may lead to anxiety or unnecessary testing; a false negative could provide spurious reassurance. Quality of the signal is influenced by skin attributes, tattoos, movement, and electrode placement. A positive LVSD screen should be investigated with clinical assessment and imaging as recommended by bodies such as the American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology.

What to Watch Next as Samsung Prepares Wider Release

Among milestones will be data in peer-reviewed journals, clarity over how results are presented to users, and a route for sharing reports with doctors. Anticipate phased rollouts by country, additional language support, and further refinements after training on a more diverse set of data so that it’s more generalizable across ages and ethnicities.

Samsung’s health R&D has been looking at more than just the heart, but LVSD screening seems to be the closest to everyday use on Galaxy Watch yet. If it sticks as promised, the wrist could soon serve as a kind of early-warning system for one of cardiology’s most critical conditions — bridging the world of wellness tracking and actual medically useful guidance.