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Apple Watch Series 6 to Feature Blood Oxygen Monitoring Sensor
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It's clear that it will require new hardware. This is far from just a software update. The fact that anyone would think this could just be a software update is just sad.
I would imagine that the challenge lies in the fact that the detector requires to be on the same side as the light source (as opposed to a standard pulse oximeter which has the detector on the other side of the finger).
Unless they can incorporate a detector into the strap on the other side of the wrist; which would be very interesting but unlikely because of the power required for light to penetrate the thickness/density of the wrist.
Blood sugar measurement is possible without using a skin electrode (there is rumors that Apple is working with a company that is researching this), but last I heard it was only about 85% accurate. So I guess they don't want to release until 90% +.
Fitbit shipped an oxygen saturation sensor in the Charge 3 released in October 2018. It took until about February 2020 (it rolled out over several weeks) before its measurements were made available in some form to the user (showing oxygen saturation variability during the night on an unlabelled scale). There were similar timelines for other Fitbit devices.
Nope - they can operate in reflectance mode where the lights and detectors are on the same side.
The reason that medical grade pulse oximeters cost so much is that they go through extensive certification to ensure that every LED and photodetector in every unit is within a very tight specification (both the units themselves and the distance between them) and that the interpretation algorithms are very accurate (given that a 5% change in reading can be crucial). Those $40 fingertip devices are just built out of bulk bought LEDs and photodetectors that are put into a 'probably good enough' plastic shell. I wouldn't trust them to accurately warn you (or stop giving you false positives after a run). If it was that simple the Series 0 watch would have had the functionality.
Standard fingertip oximeters use transmissive mode; there would be no reason for them to use reflectance.
But yes, the watch would likely use reflectance mode, which is more difficult and complicated.
(can't believe I'm now linking to scientific papers; time to log off! 😀)
Still no continuous blood glucose monitoring tho? I’m still rocking my series 0 waiting on CGM being introduced.
But you wouldn‘t measure nearly as often with those things as with a Watch that is 16-23 hours per day on your wrist anyway.
This is most likely years away and a new watch is huge for you, I use an S2 as back up and I can't wait for my S4 to be my back, the S2 is just so slow...
This may in fact be an Apple issue, they have not applied. Why hasn't Apple applied, well that may well be related to the certification process and other government/bureaucratic hurdles so unless anybody has actually gone through the process for the feature set in the watch we really don't know. Does anyone from down-under know if the likes of fit-bit and other vendors been approved like Withings?
I would love to see it available, I have a sister with MS and my parents both have heart related issues and would benefit greatly.