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Iphone Medicine Apple

Medical Study Suggests iPhone 12 With MagSafe Can Deactivate Pacemakers 33

AmiMoJo shares a report from 9to5Mac: When Apple revived MagSafe with the iPhone 12 lineup, one question brought up was how these latest devices with more magnets would interact with medical devices like pacemakers. Apple's official word was that iPhone 12/MagSafe wouldn't interfere more than previous iPhones. Now one of the first medical studies has been published by the Heart Rhythm Journal that saw a Medtronic pacemaker deactivated by holding an iPhone 12 near it (via MacMagazine. It doesn't sound like there is concrete evidence that iPhone 12 and MagSafe do pose a greater risk of increased interference but with this study out now, we may see more testing in the medical field to find out for sure. Of course it's not just iPhones or smartphones that can create interference issues, it can be any item that contains magnets strong enough create a problem.

As you'd expect, the short-term solution is to keep iPhones and other devices away from pacemakers and other similar medical devices. However, reported by Medical Xpress, Medtronic and others are likely looking to shift away from the reliance on magnets in future devices: "Unless companies like Medtronic get on board and move to smarter device configuration options, they will continue to butt heads with consumer devices -- and they will continue to lose. Smarter options don't have to be expensive; just look at your cheap IR TV remote or ultrasonic receiver-emitter pair. These devices simply work. They use an uncomplicated code to make sure there is no interference from all the other ambient sources that are invariably present. A couple of secure ultrasonic bits superimposed on your basic 40 khz carrier waves is all that is really needed. It is likely that companies like Medtronic are working on solutions like this; for example, a Medtronic programming head of some sort can be had on Ebay at the moment for a mere $34.99."
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Medical Study Suggests iPhone 12 With MagSafe Can Deactivate Pacemakers

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    If you're going to use slang and lingo you might want to define it, first.
    • Yeah the thing Apple has been putting on hardware since 2006. It's a ring of magnets so the iPhone snaps into the wireless charger.

    • MagSafe is Apple's power plug tech, that made it easy to connect and disconnect MacBooks from the power source.

      • Emphasis on "made", past tense. I'm putting off getting a new MBP in the hopes that they ditch USB-C and go back to MagSafe. I can't think why they switched in the first place.
        • Apple finally moves in the direction of a universally compatible port and you still complain? Just get one of those USB C Magsafe-Esque doohickeys that you can get for a few bucks on Amazon if it bugs you so much.

          Having a single USB charger with multiple ports that's barely bigger than a phone charger was a few years ago is great for travel. Charges my USB C laptop, phone, camera and whatever else I might be carrying around... and it's lighter than my old laptop power supplies at the same rated wattage.

    • The “MagSafe” being referred to in the summary is a feature that was introduced with the iPhone 12 line last year. It’s basically proprietary wireless charging + magnets to align and lock the inductive pad securely in place. It’s backwards compatible with Qi chargers (though they won’t benefit from the magnetic alignment/locking, or do they charge at the fastest rate) and is secure enough that it can be used for things like car mounts.

      Previously, “MagSafe” referred

  • by tiananmen tank man ( 979067 ) on Thursday January 14, 2021 @06:29PM (#60945780)

    Holding it wrong?

  • by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Thursday January 14, 2021 @06:57PM (#60945878)

    Apple does what Androidon't

  • Magnets (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Of course it's not just iPhones or smartphones that can create interference issues, it can be any item that contains magnets strong enough create a problem.

    Holy fucking fuck!! Medtronic pacemakers just shut down being near *magnets*?!

    So no more being inside or near a car. No walking into buildings with automatic doors.
    No OTA TV or radio. No speakers of any kind.
    Can't get near to a refrigerator to get food out, or near an electric oven to cook said food?

    I guess most would choose being alive and not being able to participate in our current society over the alternate option of not being alive... But personally I can't imagine such a life

    • So no more being inside or near a car. No walking into buildings with automatic doors. No OTA TV or radio. No speakers of any kind. Can't get near to a refrigerator to get food out, or near an electric oven to cook said food?

      Nice drama there, but the issue is the potential of placing the iPhone (magnet) in a shirt pocket in close proximity to the pacemaker. No one is placing a door opener or refrigerator in their pocket. Microwave ovens have long been an issue, but not sure how much tech has advanced in that area to reduce the hazard. An electric oven doesn't proceed an EMF.

    • by pz ( 113803 ) on Thursday January 14, 2021 @07:39PM (#60946016) Journal

      Medtronic pacemakers just shut down being near *magnets*?!

      Hold on there cowboy. Take a deep breath. Calm yourself. No, one of the largest manufacturers of medical products did not make pacemakers that can be turned off by walking through normal life. You have to take a magnet and put it up close to the device. Like you would with, say, a child safety lock on a cupboard.

      That said, Apple is really to blame here. They're late to the game with magnets, and should have thought of potential ways their devices might deleteriously interfere with already-existing technology.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      OMG, not more existing on EARTH!11!Eleventy!

      Bloody ASCII art filter.

      As is so often missed today, "magnet" is not binary. You need a fairly powerful magnet, and you need to get it pretty close to your chest.

      It is a travesty that these things have been designed so poorly for so long though.

      • Pacemakers have for over fifty years had a 'magnet mode' function specifically designed into them. Apple should have known and worked around it.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          I'd suggest that pacemakers should have eliminated that kind of vulnerability sometime in the last 50 years. Good way to murder someone and make it look like an accident though. Death by fridge magnet.

          • You don't want to shock the patient if their heart slows during anaesthesia, and since a pacemaker / icd can detect tiny electrical currents, you might want to reduce its sensitivity during any operation where there's a risk of emi (for instance due to the use of electrical cauterisation). And sometimes a device simply go haywire. So there needs to be a straightforward way to put it into a safe mode which doesn't require a technician to be present with specialist equipment. All user manuals warn about the u
  • It causes problems when it’s “near”, but what does that mean? Does it cause problems from the next room over, or are we talking about the iPhone needing to be implanted alongside the pacemaker before it would ever cause the pacemaker any trouble?

    If the latter, I know some people love their iPhones, but hopefully the doctors would refuse such elective surgeries. ;)

    • I once asked a nurse who supports icd patients about this, and she told me about an incident where a device was disabled when the 'owner' stood very near a speaker stack at a gig. The alert bleep from the device was obviously inaudible. Nobody knew until the logs were checked months later.
  • by pipedwho ( 1174327 ) on Thursday January 14, 2021 @08:17PM (#60946132)

    The issue has nothing to do with Pacemakers, it is a poorly considered deactivate switch in implantable defibrillators that is at issue.

    Basically, some defibrillators on the market use a reed switch that is triggered by a strong magnet that is used to disable the device for testing and other purposes. The magnets in an iPhone 12 (and any other device with a strong neodymium magnet) can trigger this switch, so it is not specifically an issue with the iPhone 12. The difference is that the iPhone 12 is probably more common.

    The problem is the use of a magnetic reed switch and assuming no strong magnets ever come close the device in normal use. That is a bit of a huge assumption for a critical medical device IIMO.

    • > magnetic reed switch

      Wow, seriously? So are MRI's completely out for these patients?

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Wow, seriously? So are MRI's completely out for these patients?

        MRIs are prohibited for people with pacemakers in general because of the metal - MRIs and their powerful magnets will attract or repel metals (depending on whether they are ferrous or not) which is not something you want happening to big things like pacemakers or the little probes at the end of the wire.

        The pacemaker will work just fine, but the patient will likely be in a lot of pain if it doesn't try to rip it out of them.

        The headphones they g

  • Confusion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday January 14, 2021 @08:24PM (#60946156) Homepage Journal

    There seems to be some confusion here. The pacemaker doesn't malfunction due to a magnetic field. BY DESIGN, a reasonably strong magnet can be placed over a pacemaker to alter it's mode of operation. In the case of implantable defibrillators, the magnet inhibits delivering a shock.

    It's a feature used in case of malfunctions or for medical procedures that would either cause false triggering or that could be dangerous if the device triggers at the wrong moment.

    There is no case where a magnet will cause the pacemaker to entirely stop pacing.

    • Agree - this feature is used any time a patient with one of these goes to the operating room for surgery. The electrocautery systems in ubiquitous use generate spurious signals that will make a defibrillator, in particular, fire. It's routine practice to call the Medtronic (or whoever) rep to come in and disable the device.
  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday January 14, 2021 @08:47PM (#60946244)

    Boomers are not the target market for Apple anyway. If this keeps them from carrying iPhones, it helps the product's image.

    On the other hand, they've gotta do something about all those magnets latching on to hipsters facial piercings.

  • Medical devices have to go through all sorts of testing and approval with the FDA before they can be sold. Changing them requires more testing and approval. A device that generates harmful interference on the other hand...
  • Why couldn't the charger base have the magnet, and the phone contain a ring of nickel or iron or any of dozens of different alloys.

    Why do we have to put damn magnets in everything? You can even buy marijuana cigarettes that held in packages containing "sustainable up-cycled magnets" [lowellfarms.com] to hold the lid closed.

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