September 8, 2025

Bill B. used the Garmin ECG app¹ on his Garmin smartwatch to check for signs of AFib. His daughter says it “saved his life.”

The first sign that something was wrong came when Bill B. went to bed early around the holidays. What started as exhaustion escalated.

Bill’s daughter Emily² noticed he looked pale. His face was puffy. He lost his breath walking to the bathroom and slept sitting up because it felt like he couldn’t breathe. And he kept saying it felt like his heart was fluttering.

Over the next four months, doctors repeatedly restarted Bill’s heart before he eventually had open heart surgery. Emily credits a Garmin smartwatch — and the Garmin ECG app — with helping her retired dad know he needed to seek medical care.

“It saved his life,” Emily said.

How the ECG app made the difference

When Bill uncharacteristically decided to go to sleep early after Christmas dinner, he blamed it on his recent travel. After he couldn’t celebrate the New Year, Emily, a hospital nurse and volunteer firefighter, checked his heart rate with her own stethoscope and learned it was higher than usual. She thought he might have COVID, but he tested negative. Bill thought he had the flu and told her he wasn’t going to the doctor. Emily couldn’t tell what was wrong but knew her “stubborn” dad needed help.

A week later, he wasn’t better but still didn’t want to go to the hospital. Emily had never seen her dad that sick and was starting to get concerned. A friend recommended her dad use a Garmin Venu® 2 Plus smartwatch to see if it would help convince her dad he needed medical care.

It did.

Bill used the Garmin ECG app³, which uses sensors on a compatible Garmin smartwatch to record the electrical signals that control how your heart beats. This recording is known as an electrocardiogram — or ECG.  The app analyzed the recording to calculate his heart rate and detected signs of an irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation (AFib), which occurs when the upper and lower chambers of the heart are not beating in sync.

Bill and Emily took the ECG recording straight to the hospital. His doctors agreed with the ECG app results and performed an echocardiogram. The doctors told them Bill had AFib, Emily said, and that the Garmin ECG app may have helped save his life because it convinced him to seek care.

Over the next few months, Bill was in and out of the hospital before he eventually had open-heart surgery. Now, he’s back to enjoying his life while scuba diving, running, fishing and traveling. He feels better than ever.

“This watch (and the ECG app) helped him,” Emily said. “I want everybody in my family to get a Garmin.”

Want to get the ECG app? Browse compatible Garmin smartwatches and find the one that matches your needs.

¹_{The ECG app is only available on select Garmin smartwatches with the latest version of the Garmin Connect™ smartphone app and watch software. The ECG app is not available in all regions; see Garmin.com/ecg for availability. The ECG app is only intended for adults aged 22 years and over. The ECG app is capable of recording an ECG similar to a Lead I ECG and detecting the presence of atrial fibrillation or normal sinus rhythm.}

²_{Emily received a discount on a Forerunner® 970 smartwatch, which also provides the ECG app that she believed helped her father, to gift to him after participating in this blog}

³_{The ECG data displayed by the Garmin ECG app is intended for informational use only. The user should not interpret or take clinical action based on the device’s output without consultation of a qualified health care professional. The ECG waveform is meant to supplement rhythm classification for the purposes of discriminating AFib from normal SR, and it is not intended to replace traditional methods of diagnosis or treatment.}