Top all-time · #11594
Empirical Health
Company blog · empirical.health/blog · on HN as brandonbhealthscience
Empirical Health is the company blog at empirical.health, writing about health and science. Since 2024, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 124 times, most often “AI beyond LLMs: a wearable foundation model based on JEPA”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked by HN readers for posts on health data from wearables and tests, such as an Apple Watch sleep apnea study, a wearable foundation model trained on 3M days of data, and coronary artery calcium testing. Comments only link or discuss the posts; none judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- AI beyond LLMs: a wearable foundation model based on JEPA2 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2025-12-10
- Inflammation now predicts heart disease more strongly than cholesterol2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-09-30
- How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-09-09
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-07-30
What Hacker News says?
This is a nicely-designed study. For decades, we've known that inflammation is a risk factor for heart attacks. In this study, the researchers designed a custom antibody that binds to oral bacteria. Then they used histological staining to identify specific biofilm structures inside the atherosclerotic tissue. Bacteria released from the biofilm were observed in heart attack cases, which gives us evidence that when th…
Comment linking /product/comprehensive-health-panel
on “Myocardial infarction may be an infectious disease”Submitted Inflammation now predicts heart disease more strongly than cholesterol as a story · 647 points
HN discussionApple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo. Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone, using the sensors from Apple Watch. The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a re…
Comment linking /metrics/oxygen/
on “Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US”Submitted How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works as a story · 175 points
HN discussionCoronary CT calcium scans are getting more popular. But before getting one, I'd do these simpler tests first: - ApoB - about 20% of people with normal cholesterol results will have abnormal ApoB, and be at risk of heart disease. - Lp(a) - the strongest hereditary risk factor for heart disease. - hs-CRP - inflammation roughly doubles your risk of heart disease - HbA1c - insulin resistance is a risk factor for just ab…
Comment linking /product/comprehensive-health-panel
on “Medicare Will Pay $50k for Your Heart Attack. It Should Pay $100 to Prevent It”Submitted The science behind on-the-wrist blood pressure tracking as a story · 156 points
HN discussionNot yet -- this one is just a research study. Some of their previous research has made it into product features. For example, Apple Watch VO2Max (cardio fitness) is based on a deep neural network published in 2023: https://www.empirical.health/blog/how-apple-watch-cardio-fit...
Comment linking /blog/how-apple-watch-cardio-fitness-vo2max-works/
on “Beyond sensor data: Foundation models of behavioral data from wearables”Submitted The Effect of Noise on Sleep as a story · 152 points
HN discussionTape on the posters name: about: Data for good. Co-Founder at Empirical Health ( https://empirical.health ). Before: Risk Engineering at Brex
Comment linking /
on “Coronary artery calcium testing can reveal plaque in arteries, but is underused”Submitted How Apple Watch estimates VO2Max within 1.2 ml/kg/min without a treadmill test as a story · 89 points
HN discussionThere's a clinical trial for a new drug, lepodisiran, which lowered Lp(a) by 93.9%. Outside of that, if your Lp(a) is high, then the first strategy would be to choose a lower ApoB target than you would otherwise. (Every Lp(a) particle is also an ApoB/cholesterol particle, but 6x more atherogenic. So by lowering ApoB, you are compensating for the effect of high Lp(a)) Summary of the current research/evidence is here:…
Comment linking /blog/lipoprotein-a-blood-test/
on “Coronary artery calcium testing can reveal plaque in arteries, but is underused”Submitted Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23% as a story · 73 points
HN discussionBefore getting a CAC scan, I'd probably do these tests first: * ApoB - about 20% of people with normal cholesterol results will have abnormal ApoB, and be at risk of heart disease. * Lp(a) - the strongest hereditary risk factor for heart disease. * hs-CRP - inflammation roughly doubles your risk of heart disease * HbA1c - insulin resistance is a risk factor for just about everything. * eGFR - estimates the volume of…
Comment linking /product/comprehensive-health-panel
on “Coronary artery calcium testing can reveal plaque in arteries, but is underused”Submitted Vitamin D supplements cut heart attack risk by 52%. Why? as a story · 27 points
HN discussionThis sounds like reflex tachycardia -- your body wants to ensure blood is flowing to all the right places, so it raises heart rate to partially compensate for blood pressure falling. Reflex tachycardia can be a normal response to certain types of blood pressure medications, like vasodilators or diuretics. Beta blockers are a different common type of blood pressure medication that attempt to lower both blood pressure…
Comment linking /pots
on “The science behind on-the-wrist blood pressure tracking”Submitted Don't Die of Heart Disease as a story · 25 points
HN discussion#1 is a great idea for follow-up -- looking at variance, 90th percentile vs median, and so on. There's probably some very salient measure of sleep-affecting noise that we can derive from the data. On the accuracy of sleep metrics, when Apple Watch makes an error, it tends to misclassify deep or REM sleep as core (light) sleep, or waking as light sleep. It's relatively rare to misclassify deep or REM sleep as awake,…
Comment linking /metrics/deep-sleep-percent
on “The Effect of Noise on Sleep”Submitted Low cholesterol targets cut cardiovascular events by 33% as a story · 21 points
HN discussionNot now, but future Apple Watches are rumored to track blood pressure through analysis of pulse transit time: https://www.empirical.health/blog/apple-watch-blood-pressure...
Comment linking /blog/apple-watch-blood-pressure/
on “Show HN: Heart Rate Zones Plus – The first iOS app I developed”Submitted Cardiac imaging study found plaque in 34.6% of men in their 30s as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThis particular study looked at inflammation through imaging (CT scans) as part of Biograph's $17,500 program. You can get at the underlying signal fairly cheaply through a simple blood test (hs-CRP). It's fairly well-known that inflammation is an independent risk factor for heart disease, alongside LDL cholesterol (or ApoB) and blood pressure: https://www.empirical.health/blog/inflammation-and-heart-hea... The Amer…
Comment linking /blog/inflammation-and-heart-health/
on “AI analysis of CT scans finds 42.9% of patients have coronary inflammation”Submitted Objective metrics that change the most as we age as a story · 9 points
HN discussionIt doesn't give you a blood pressure number -- just alerts if it thinks you have high blood pressure. I wrote a bit about the science of blood pressure on the wrist here: https://www.empirical.health/blog/apple-watch-blood-pressure...
Comment linking /blog/apple-watch-blood-pressure/
on “Apple Watch Ultra 3”Submitted 34% of U.S. women under age 50 have iron deficiency under new guidelines as a story · 8 points
HN discussionHbA1c, or just diabetes as a binary variable, has been one of the main inputs into predicting heart attack risk for a long time. The main marker of kidney function, eGFR, was added with the AHA/ACC's PREVENT equations in 2023. I wrote a bit about the science behind heart risk calculators, and their various inputs like cholesterol, blood pressure, A1c, eGFR, and so on here: https://www.empirical.health/blog/heart-att…
Comment linking /blog/heart-attack-risk-calculator/
on “Heart and Kidney Diseases and Type 2 Diabetes May Be One Ailment”Submitted AI beyond LLMs: a wearable foundation model based on JEPA as a story · 7 points
HN discussionFirst, a grain of salt, I'm certainly not an expert, I've just read a bit about the subject. You know how people like cold pressed extra virgin olive oil? Or avocado oil? Those are "high quality". Industrially refined/deodorized/hexane-extracted soybean, corn, non-high-oleic sunflower/safflower oil, canola tend to be considered to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. Deodorizing causes the oil to oxidize, as does…
Comment linking /blog/inflammation-and-heart-health/
on “Eat Real Food – Introducing the New Pyramid”Submitted Vitamin D regulates >5% of the human genome as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI’m a co-founder at a YC startup ( https://empirical.health ) that treats a number of long COVID patients, and I think the way forward really is to integrate AI into the doctor’s work. GPT-4 is often scarily good at suggesting diagnostic and treatment plans for even very rare conditions. It will sometimes suggest things even well-trained doctors wouldn’t think of. But it also makes some basic and expensive errors. F…
Comment linking /
on “Hidden flaws behind expert-level accuracy of multimodal GPT-4 vision in medicine”Submitted The average Apple Watch user gets 49 minutes of deep sleep per night as a story · 5 points
HN discussion