Apple Watch Blood Oxygen Detection Feature Found In iOS 14 Code Snippet 37
Apple Watch will add the ability to detect blood oxygen levels for the first time, 9to5Mac has learned based on an exclusive look at iOS 14 code snippets. From the report: Blood oxygen levels between 95 and 100% are considered healthy; blood oxygen levels below 80% may lead to compromised heart and brain functionality. Risk of respiratory or cardiac arrest is common after continued low blood oxygen saturation. To that end, Apple is developing a new health notification based on the vital measurement. When Apple Watch detects low blood oxygen saturation below a certain threshold, a notification will trigger alerting the user similar to current heart rate notifications.
It's unclear at this point what hardware and software will be required for blood oxygen detection and notifications. It's possible future Apple Watch Series 6 hardware will be required for the new health feature. It could also come to all or newer Apple Watch models with watchOS 7 in the fall. The original Apple Watch hardware is believed to be capable of measuring blood oxygen levels through the built-in heart rate monitor. Apple upgraded the heart rate monitor with Apple Watch Series 4, adding electrocardiogram features, but Apple Watch hasn't offered blood oxygen measurement features yet. Other hardware and software features have also been leaked, such as details about an upcoming iPad Pro with three cameras and Apple's Tile-like item trackers, called AirTags.
It's unclear at this point what hardware and software will be required for blood oxygen detection and notifications. It's possible future Apple Watch Series 6 hardware will be required for the new health feature. It could also come to all or newer Apple Watch models with watchOS 7 in the fall. The original Apple Watch hardware is believed to be capable of measuring blood oxygen levels through the built-in heart rate monitor. Apple upgraded the heart rate monitor with Apple Watch Series 4, adding electrocardiogram features, but Apple Watch hasn't offered blood oxygen measurement features yet. Other hardware and software features have also been leaked, such as details about an upcoming iPad Pro with three cameras and Apple's Tile-like item trackers, called AirTags.
A natural development (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrist oximeters are already on the market, and have achieved satisfactory accuracy in comparison to the more common finger-mounted device, which measures the transmissivity pof two different light frequencies through a finger to a sensor on the other side. Wrist-mounted devices have to use reflectivity.
If Apple puts this function into Watch, what other uses in conjunction with its other sensors might the O2-reading light beams have?
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I'd prefer one from another manufacturer with a decent battery life. People like Xaomi make ones that will run for weeks on a charge and have decent health monitoring features.
Actually my ideal one would be a Casio watch. They already make ones with Bluetooth that can display notifications. Add in some health sensors and they would be perfect. Battery life is years for the watch and a month for the Bluetooth part (separate batteries).
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Frequency is a shitty Dennis Quaid movie. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
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high frequency microwave
Do you have a source showing that anything microwave is being used, or are you just an idiot troll? Blood oximeters work by shining specific frequencies of light through your skin.
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If this was the case, this product would never be allowed on market by the CPSC.
I don't think the tiny, ultra low power transmitter is going to do any damage to your blood.
We are exposed to all kinds of radio waves all across the spectrum, and have been since the day we were born. I don't see people dropping dead around KROK, The #1 Classic Rock Station which may be pumping out millions of watts of RF energy 24/7.
Now if you put this thing against a florescent tube, and it causes it to glow,
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"your O2 levels have fallen to 90% [ding] You have the coronavirus."
No, you just somked a cigarette and, according the the GPS, in location where that is forbidden, wait where you are until the police arrives.
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Re: Coronavirus Monitoring (Score:1)
Your insurance premium will be adjusted. Why did you say on the questionnaire that you are a nonsmoker??
Re: Coronavirus Monitoring (Score:3)
Well considering how poorly the heart rate function works when actually working out.. Im not sure I want that many critical alerts. When I am on the elliptical doing about 50 cycles per min at a resistance of 12, the damn HR monitor thinks my HR is around 68. As if. Its more like 148. Absolutely useless when it comes to predicting my workout workload on that particular exercise. last thing I need is the damn thing calling 911 for me. I dont need that kind of bill.
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Bro, do you even Crossfit?
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I have the opposite problem. My friend's Apple watch that I tried for a few days almost always reads twice the actual rate unless I'm exercising. Then, it reads correctly. So when I exercise, my heart rate decreases according to the measurement. I have a nightmarish looking EKG after a heart attack and had a quadruple bypass so I understand in my case that the measurement is understandably hard for Apple to measure.
Re: Coronavirus Monitoring (Score:2)
No pressure but you realize you are in the risk factor group for this new virus right? Get your hands on albuterol if you can. And get mucinex. Just like the flu, keep the airways going. I bought a nebulizer online years ago and whenever i get a sinus infection I talk the doctor into more of the vials. I was stockpiling for the flu. I would say sudafed but your cardiac and it raises BP. Garlic supplements and Curcumin and black pepper should help with secondaries.
Re: Coronavirus Monitoring (Score:2)
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Er....what? How it this "surreptitious"? If this feature worked they would blast it in all the advertisements.
As a newly minted aviator.... (Score:3)
...I find this to be an actually useful feature. Hypoxia is insidious, and while there are regs, it's still possible to start losing decision-making capabilities well below required minimums for onboard oxygen. It would be nice to have a built-in alarm function to at least inform you of.the situation and maybe take action. Combine that with the everpresent iPad in just about every GA cockpit to run foreflight and you've got yourself something useful.
Sure, you could do it for loads cheaper other ways and I'd never get one, but it's not a completely useless feature.
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If somebody on that Helios crew, or even a passenger, had had one of these, all those people might be alive today.
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Doubtful. Loss of cabin pressure isn't usually a slow thing you don't notice. It's usually a sudden event where everyone passes out. Planes also have cabin pressure sensors and alarms. Where this might be useful though would be as a backup for carbon monoxide. If it went off in the middle of the night, it could possibly save some lives. It could also likely alert people with sleep apnea that don't realize they have it.
Re:As a newly minted aviator.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sleep apnea would be one it could tip the person off to though.
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An anemic patient may not have enough functioning hemoglobin in the blood to oxygenate the tissues. The small amount of functioning hemoglobin in the blood may be well saturated with oxygen, so the patient may have a normal SpO2 reading, but the patient may not have enough oxygen going to the tissues.
http://incenter.medical.philip... [philips.com]
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It was in the case of Helios 522. There was no malfunction on the flight. A mechanic had, after running some ground tests of the pressurization system, left it on Manual instead of Auto. The crew failed to detect this in preflight, causing the 737 to be pressurized inadequately on ascent to cruise altitude, and then somehow missed warnings of low pressure.. A series of purely human errors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
One oximeter anywhere on the plane could have saved th
Apple watch, practicing medicine without a license (Score:5, Informative)
Blood oxygen levels between 95 and 100% are considered healthy
Not necessarily. If I could tell if a patient has a "healthy" amount of oxygen in their blood just by looking at O2 SATURATION (which is what the percentage is) then I'd save myself the time and trouble of taking arterial blood from the patient to do a blood gas analysis. While pO2 and saturation are usually correlated, this is not always the case. Thus you cannot just look at saturation and think everything is ok. You can have fully saturated hemoglobin that doesn't want to release the oxygen because something else (usually pH) is shifting the curve to the left. The oxygen is there, it's just not getting to the tissue. You can have complete saturation but not enough red blood cells. Etc. There are plenty of examples of when pulse oxymetry can give you a false positive - meaning you think things are fine when they're not.
If you don't feel well and you're out of breath and your watch is telling you everything is fine, ignore the damned watch and get your butt to a hospital. Your watch could be lying to you. Your body usually doesn't.
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That's all true. There probably aren't too many situations where home based oximetry is really going to be of practical use. But there is one really good application for the technology-- it's good as an initial screening tool for sleep apnea, which is 1) really common and 2) really underdiagnosed.
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... and get your butt to a hospital.
Don't forget to take your lungs along also.
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That's not a medical condition. That's not a medical
So when will they add the sensor? (Score:1)
This will be great if they start including a sensor so this code can be used, but as far as we know this may just be a "dummied out" feature that they may never release to the public.
We will just have to wait and see.