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Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

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41–50 of 357 posts

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software patents are a scourge.

I would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather than engage in a licensing deal.

I hate the word “poaching”. A company offered employees more money in exchange for their labor.

I see no issue. Would you have preferred what happened in the Jobs era where 7 of the largest tech firms colluded not to hire from each other’s company?

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#42

Massimo invented this technology (yay Massimo!) in the 90s yet their Japanese patents [1] weren't considered prior art (WTF?) because of technical legal reasons. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002542493A5/en%EF%BF%BC So I suppose if Massimo is going to use a technical legality to extend then Apple can use a technical legality to avoid.

That is interesting, had not understood this previously.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds good for the employees, so go Apple?

Good for everyone except whoever had money invested in Masimo

Similar to what HNers are so happy to say about restaurant owners who actually have to be profitable and can’t depend on the largess of investors, if Masimo can’t afford to pay market rates to developers, the company doesn’t deserve to exist.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#44
post #32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of the loop, can this be done without drawing blood now?

You can do it by using interstitial fluid, which is how CGMs work. But, in short, no, not yet: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/do...

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification and answer.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#45
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really easy to avoid your employees being "poached": treat them well, and pay them better.

Wow you must work for a company with incredibly deep pockets. No way can massimo compete on salary with apple. Only people in the game who can do that are google facebook apple chatgpt etc.

And as a hypothetical sought after employee, how is that my problem? If another company wants to roll a shit ton of money up to my doorstep, why shouldn’t I take it?

Should I be treating my employer “like family” and care about “the mission”?

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#46
post #29

In my experience, the Apple Watch blood oxygen monitoring was horribly inaccurate. It would report wildly variable results, often telling me that I had a blood oxygen level of 80% (which, if true, would indicate that I should be getting myself to an emergency room ASAP). Regular pulse oxygen meters are cheap and reliable.

Wouldn't you already be super dead with a true reading of 80? Or at least unable to cognitively interpret the reading?

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#47
post #29

In my experience, the Apple Watch blood oxygen monitoring was horribly inaccurate. It would report wildly variable results, often telling me that I had a blood oxygen level of 80% (which, if true, would indicate that I should be getting myself to an emergency room ASAP). Regular pulse oxygen meters are cheap and reliable.

It may depend on skin type, body composition and wrist hair - perhaps the validation work used a skewed sample?

I’ve found the sensor to give stable results, with repeated measurements always within 2 percentage points.

And the results give qualitatively very reasonable data when I sleep at high altitude. The readings have a clear dependence on the elevation.

I haven’t cross checked against other meters, but my Apple Watch 9 sensor gives stable and reasonable results that match expected altitude trends. So yeah it may not be tuned to a wide enough variety of wrist types.

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#48
post #28

Hopefully blood glucose monitoring will come soon as well

I'm out of the loop, can this be done without drawing blood now?

It’s been going on for a while - Non-invasive monitoring. Here’s a general link https://www.google.com/search?q=blood+glucose+patent+startup

I believe a firm in Uk holds a patent for it and Apple has partnered with them a while ago.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-takes-key-step-towards-b...

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#49
post #2

Apple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo. Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone, using the sensors from Apple Watch. The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a red…

Crazy that this is a 'patent'. We did this experiment in high school 30 years ago.

[dead]

Re: Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US

#50
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of the loop, can this be done without drawing blood now?

It’s been going on for a while - Non-invasive monitoring. Here’s a general link https://www.google.com/search?q=blood+glucose+patent+startup I believe a firm in Uk holds a patent for it and Apple has partnered with them a while ago. https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-takes-key-step-towards-b...

Very neat! If they can crack this, I might actually bite and finally buy one.
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