Soon, Google will add some interesting new features to the Fit app for Pixel smartphones. You will be able to measure your heart rate by placing a finger on the rear camera, which reminds us of a fad from many years ago in the Android world.
This works by monitoring the color change as blood passes through the fingertip. On the other hand, the measurement of your respiratory rate works with the selfie camera, where you position yourself within a frame and then just breathe.
The software will monitor the rise and fall of your chest and infer the rate from there. A Google Health product manager explains that doctors count a patient’s breathing rate in the same way, and the machine learning technique of the company employed here is trying to emulate that.
“Many people, especially in the economically disadvantaged classes at the moment, do not have items like wearables, but would still benefit from the ability to track their breathing rate, heart rate, etc.,” said the Google PM.
According to internal Google studies, the respiratory rate feature is accurate at one breath per minute, for people with and without health problems. Heart rate readings were accurate at 2%. The features were tested on people with a variety of skin tones and had similar accuracy.
This may come to non-Pixel phones in the future, but Google wants to first study how they would work on other devices.
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