Apple Watch: Synapse on your wrist

What you’ll do

Pair your Apple Watch with Synapse on iPhone. Glance at your patients, tasks, and notes from your wrist. Tap to mark tasks done. Dictate a quick question to the Brain without unlocking the phone in front of patients.

Why nurses use this

Hour 5. Family in the room. You need to check whether the 1300 BP got logged, or whether the next med is due. Pulling your phone out reads as “she’s on her phone.” Glancing at your wrist reads as “she’s checking the time.” The Watch isn’t a second app. It’s a stealthier interface to the parts of Synapse that benefit from being glanceable.

The Watch app is iOS-only. There’s no WearOS / Android equivalent yet.

How to get there

• Pair the Watch with your iPhone (the standard Apple Watch + iPhone pairing flow).
• Install Synapse on Watch from the iPhone’s Watch app → My Watch → Available apps → install Synapse.
• Sign in on iPhone first. The Watch inherits the session.
• Start a shift on iPhone. The Watch gates itself behind “shift active”. Without an open shift, the Watch shows a gate screen, not the full UI.

The Watch needs your subscription active (or the trial running) and a shift started on the phone. Start the shift, raise your wrist, and the full UI is there.

Step-by-step

1. Glance at the patient list. Raise your wrist; Synapse shows your patients as a list of cards with code-status badges.

2. Glance at tasks. Swipe to the tasks view. Tap a task to toggle complete; the change syncs back to your iPhone immediately. Subtasks are accessible by tapping into a parent task.

3. Glance at notes. Swipe to the notes view to read your shift notes from the wrist. Reading, not writing; editing happens on the phone.

4. Dictate to the Brain. Swipe to the voice tab and speak. Your question goes to the Brain on your iPhone, exactly as if you’d typed it into the chat. The response shows up in the iPhone’s Brain thread so you can read it later.

5. Notifications and your watch face. Synapse notifications surface on the Watch, and you can add Synapse to your watch face for one-tap access.

Tips from the floor

• The Watch is for glanceable, not for input. Add patients, edit forms, build care plans on the phone. The Watch is for “what’s the next task?” and “mark this done.”
• What you say on the Watch goes to the phone. The phone is the brain. Keep them both nearby; airplane mode on either kills the connection.
• Subtasks are why a med-pass routine works on Watch. You toggle each med as a subtask under a parent “0900 med pass” task. The Watch handles subtask toggles cleanly.
• No shift, no Watch UI. Start the shift on your phone and the Watch lights up. It’s there for the shift itself.
• Battery drain is moderate. Voice mode is the heavy lift. Glanceable use through a shift is fine on a charged Watch.

Common questions

Is there an Android Wear / WearOS version? Not yet. The Watch app is iOS / Apple Watch only.

Can the Watch work without the iPhone nearby? Glanceable views (patient list, tasks) cache to the Watch. Toggles sync when the iPhone reconnects. Voice and Brain interactions require the iPhone.

Will the Watch show PHI on the wrist? Patient identifiers (bed, initials, basic status) yes. Sensitive PHI is reserved for the phone. Your hospital’s policy on wearables and PHI still applies, so check before you wear it on a unit that has rules.

What if I get a code blue notification on Watch? Synapse doesn’t connect to your hospital’s code-blue paging system. Notifications come from your own task list (scheduled meds, reminders). The Watch is your brain sheet on your wrist; it’s not a clinical alarm.

Can the Watch start or end a shift? No. Start Shift and End Shift live on the iPhone. The rituals are intentional and slightly slower than a wrist tap. The Watch acts during the shift; it doesn’t open or close it.

Where this fits in your shift

The Watch is a thinner surface over Synapse for the moments when reaching for the phone is the wrong move. The full features it surfaces live in the deeper guides: the Brain, Tasks workspace, Patients workspace.