Health Canada tweeted that Apple is “working to bring the Apple Watch heart features to Canada soon,” but said it has not received an application from the company. Apple needs Health Canada approval to sell watches with the feature in Canada. The heartbeat-monitoring feature has been available in the U.S. since December 2018.  The feature is designed to detect atrial fibrillation, a condition which affects six million people in the U.S. and can lead to strokes. Apple did not reply to The Logic’s request for comment by deadline. (The Logic)

Talking point: The company has more advanced heartbeat-monitoring functionality than Alphabet and Samsung, though both are working to catch up. All three companies will need to get approval from regulators. However, the real prize is winning over cardiologists, whose endorsements could give tech companies access to the lucrative medical device market. Earlier this week, Apple released results from a study with Stanford University researchers of 419,000 Apple Watch wearers using an older version without the heart-monitoring features, though they were still able to detect abnormal heartbeats. It found that 0.5 per cent of users received a notification about an irregular heartbeat, but only about one in five contacted researchers for further testing—a concern for some doctors at the American College of Cardiology conference in New Orleans, where the results were presented.