Apple Watch used to monitor heart rate of premature baby born mid-flight: Report

Thanks to the quick thinking of a doctor and three NICU nurses on board, the baby who was born eleven weeks early was safely transported to a hospital as soon as the plane landed.

The Apple Watch has reportedly saved a newborn's life while on a flight to Hawaii.  (Unsplash)

In what can only be described as being in the right place at the right time, a doctor on board a flight to Hawaii was able to save a premature baby that was born mid-air using his wits, along with other objects on the plane – and an Apple Watch. The incident occurred during a flight to Honolulu, when the newborn Raymond Mounga's mother Lavinia went into labour in the washroom, as reported by KHON2. Mounga didn't even know she was pregnant, so the arrival of the baby who was born at 29 weeks instead of 40 weeks, was a surprise for everyone on board.

Luckily, there were three nurses on board, from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) department at North Kansas City Hospital, who responded to the in-flight call for emergency help along with a family physician who was on the same flight. “I went back there first, and she is holding a baby, underneath the toilet almost. And so I'm yelling, ‘Mimi! There's a baby, and it's little!'” said one of the nurses to KHON2.

The doctor also said that since the mother had delivered the baby prematurely, there was no equipment on the plane that could be used to keep him warm. Using some resourceful thinking the four medical staff made baby warmers from bottles using a microwave. Another important part of keeping the baby healthy and alive – monitoring his vitals, was done by using an Apple Watch to keep an eye on his heart rate, the doctor had stated.

The report says that once the plane landed in Honolulu with the lucky baby alive and well on board, he was rushed with his mother to the Kapiolani Medical Center – they met their saviours a couple of days later. He will remain at the NICU where is being treated until he is healthy enough to go home, according to the news service.

This isn't the first time that we've heard of Apple's capable smartwatches working in the nick of time to save lives – in March, we learned about a man who fell into a frozen river and was saved by his Apple Watch that called firefighters in the nick of time. In January, a UK cyclist was saved by his Apple Watch after he was left hanging above a flooded river, while in October last year, the ECG function on the Apple Watch helped save a 61-year-old man in Indore who realised something was wrong and got operated safely, as well as another 13-year-old from Oklahoma who was alerted in time about a serious undetected heart condition.