
#Heart monitor watch skin
It involves placing an optical device on a finger or ear lobe and, like optical heart rate monitoring, this device forces light through the skin towards a detector. The most accurate way to measure SpO 2 is to test a blood sample, but pulse oximetry is the more common method used by health professionals.

It has risen in prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic because one of the many puzzling aspects of the disease is that is causes silent hypoxia, a condition where oxygen levels in the body drop abnormally low without patients showing signs of respiratory distress. Oxygen saturation (SpO 2) – the percentage of haemoglobin bound to oxygen in your blood – is the latest metric to arrive in wearables thanks to more efficient power use. In the near future, there will be no reason to wear a smartwatch as we will be able to have clothes with seamlessly embedded sensors The next generation of batteries are far more efficient and will support monitoring on a much finer scale.’ Valeria Nicolosi, expert in nanomaterials and energy storage and a professor at Trinity College Dublin, says: ‘there are lots of very cool things the battery and materials science fields are working on which will revolutionise this technology. Recent advances in battery technology have allowed for more sensors and a higher degree of accuracy in wearables.

A recent large-scale study ( bit.ly/3nyyLeE) found that more than a third of participants who were notified of an irregular pulse by their smartwatch had atrial fibrillation. The accuracy and reliability of the algorithms for regular health monitoring is still under investigation though, mainly due to variations that could be caused by different skin pigmentations. The newest devices and software use advanced algorithms to monitor pulse rate data and detect issues such as atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat).
