Google Lets You Measure Heart Rate and Respiratory Rate

As we know, heart and respiratory rates are two main signs to assess health and wellness. According to the latest news, you can measure heart rate and respiratory rate using a cell phone. The giant company Google announced that these features would be available in the Google Fit app for Pixel phones in March.

It practices a smartphone camera and a computer vision technique. It is called optical flow. This technique detects respiratory rate via subtle chest movements to measure it.

Meanwhile, for the heart rate, it utilizes a smartphone camera to detect subtle color differences in the fingertip. Those changes happen when freshly oxygenated blood moves from your heart through your body.

According to the director of Health Technologies, Google Health, Shwetak Patel, Google Fit will enable users to detect heart rate and respiratory rate via their phone’s camera. He says that these features will be available in the following month, in the Google Fit app for Pixel phones. Moreover, it is likely to be available to more Android devices.

Google wants to help people track and improve day-to-day wellness

Patel also announced that in order for an individual to measure their respiratory rate, they need to place head and upper body in view of his phone’s front-facing camera and breathe normally. Meanwhile, to measure heart rate, the user needs to put their finger on the rear-facing camera lens. Patel says that the company aims to help people track and improve day-to-day wellness.

Once the phone makes the measurements, it will save the data in the app to watch trends over time. App also keeps other health and wellness information.

Before launching the product for respiratory rate, Google has already made initial clinical validation. They examined accuracy among healthy people and those with respiratory conditions that might affect the measurement.

According to data, its algorithm is accurate within one breath per minute on average on both groups. These features are also similar to clinical-grade devices.