A potentially life-saving capability is being added to the Pixel Watch 3 for the first time. Google said in a blog post that the FDA had approved its Loss of Pulse Detection feature.
Your heartbeat is tracked by the feature. Your watch will immediately switch on more precise infrared LEDs and search for motion data if your heart stops beating, which could be caused by cardiac arrest, respiratory or circulatory failure, overdose, or poisoning.
The Watch 3 will initiate an audio alarm and countdown if it detects that you are not responding. If you do not react, the watch will use your phone or LTE connection to summon emergency services, let them know you do not have a pulse, and provide your position.
According to Google, the watch will be able to distinguish between a real cardiac event and the user taking it off. Although safety features like crash and fall detection are not new, they are not as good as this one, which is why the FDA had to approve it first.
Heartbeats are tracked by other watches, although they do so far less frequently than the Pixel Watch 3. For instance, the Apple Watch automatically measures heart rate every three to seven minutes.
Google collaborated with cardiologists.
Speaking to The Verge in August, Sandeep Waraich, senior director of product management for Pixel wearables, explained that pulse detection is a combination of pulse, heartbeat, contact with skin, and “a bunch of other things like motion.”
Google collaborated with cardiologists to develop the feature by learning what a pulse loss on watch insights looks like. An AI system was developed using that data and tested on hundreds of thousands of hours of real-world user data from a wide range of individuals. Google next replicated the kinds of falls that would mirror someone abruptly losing their pulse by using stunt actors wearing tourniquets, which would artificially generate a loss of pulse.
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Robert Haba is the founder and editor-in-chief of Droid Tools. A lifelong gadget enthusiast with over a decade following the Android ecosystem, he built this publication to cut through the noise and give readers honest, real-world coverage of the tech they actually use.
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