Fitbit has updated its app for iOS and Android that can help people with sleep apnea. It now includes a table that shows the variations in the oxygen level in the blood thanks to the oximeter integrated in some of its smart health connected accessories. The brand hopes to obtain accreditation across the Atlantic to diagnose the disease.
smart health connected accessories will not replace real doctors. However, they can easily become whistleblowers with their biometric sensors. The good example is the Apple Watch Series 4 (and the Apple Watch Series 5) which incorporates an EKG. Thanks to this, users can measure heart rate and be alerted in case of arrhythmiaindicates that there may be a problem. Many other models are able to create anomaly alerts using their sensors.
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The most widely used biometric sensor is certainly the oximeter, which you also find under the name of "SpO2 sensor". It is a sensor that measures the oxygen level in the blood (more scientifically called blood oxygen saturation rate). It is a sensor that you find in some smartphones (at Samsung in particular) and in many smart health connected watches, like at Fitbit. The three Versa (Versa, Versa 2 and Versa Lite), the Ionic and the Charge 3 are all equipped with such a sensor which is mainly used to study the sleep cycle (and establish a score in the dedicated application).
Study the variations of oxygen in the blood
This week, Fitbit pushed for an update to its app that uses the information obtained by this sensor differently. A new dashboard has been integrated which continuously monitors the oxygen level in the blood. Each time you breathe in, this rate naturally changes (it goes up, then it goes down). And the application precisely records this figure. During the sleep phases, breathing is slower, the variations are less accentuated. Unless you stop breathing: we call this sleep apnea.
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And it is precisely these too strong variations that Fitbit wishes to be able to identify in order to alert you. This is not a diagnosis, but this continuous Review makes it possible to detect anomalies which are difficult to diagnose outside the medical framework (and even hospital, since a follow-up in hospital is today necessary to be sure that a patient is suffering from sleep apnea ).
So this is a real improvement from Fitbit which will be pushed to the United States at first, but which should gradually arrive in other countries. On the other side of the Atlantic, Fitbit is working with health authorities so that the data recorded by the oximeter of its watches receive the approval of the health authority. An accreditation which would attest that its oximeter, its protocol and its algorithms are able to diagnose a case of sleep apnea as well as a doctor could. Fitbit is not alone in this, since Withings and Apple have also shown a willingness to move in this direction.
Source: Gizmodo
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