The Pixel Watch’s heart-stopping new feature
Less than a year after the Apple Watch stepped up its AFib detection game, another Big Tech wearable is expanding what smartwatch-based cardiac monitoring can do for everyday users.
The story: Google recently announced its ‘loss of pulse’ detection feature has received U.S. FDA clearance.
- The feature will be available starting with the Pixel Watch 3.
- ‘Loss of pulse’ joins other Pixel Watch-based safety features, including car crash detection, fall detection, and ECG irregular heart rhythm detection.
- Google also published a paper in Nature describing the feature’s development, which included many different instances of simulated loss of pulse events—such as planned implanted defibrillator testing.
Who can this feature benefit?: Google has been clear that the feature is not intended for users with pre-existing heart conditions or those who may require clinical heart monitoring. So whose loss of pulse is the feature meant to detect?
- The company cites situations including cardiac arrest, respiratory or circulatory failure, and overdose or poisoning as situations that might precipitate the kind of loss of pulse event the smartwatch can detect.
- Not to worry—the feature won’t just sound an alarm because a user has taken off their watch or due to a reading error. The feature kicks in with an alarm and countdown after a brief check-in period.
- If there’s still no response from the user, the smartwatch taps into its cellular connection to hail emergency services.
Google is now working on training emergency services providers to help them understand how to field calls made from Pixel Watches.
Can this feature actually make a difference?: Critics have pointed out the feature may not make a material difference in life-saving measures unless the patient is already around people. With a true loss of pulse, CPR needs to be started immediately to prevent brain damage and death.
- Even the Nature paper remarks that unwitnessed cardiac arrest is “nearly unsurvivable.” That’s why where the feature really shines is in sounding the alarm to alert any people around the user of what’s happening—so they can ideally administer CPR before emergency services arrive.
- Plus, Google developed the feature with a high specificity (99.987%), meaning that false positives are extremely rare, preventing undue burden on emergency services.
- While this feature can’t save every user whose loss of pulse it may detect, under the right circumstances, it can add an extra layer of protection, improving survival odds. We’re eager to see more wearables roll out safety features like this, making heart episodes more survivable thanks to technology.