I really like the look of the new Apple Watch 10. I had to replace mine about a year ago because for some reason it stopped being able to make cellular calls independent of my phone. I was a bit worried I might lose SaO2 monitoring when the replacement shipped, but fortunately I did not. Now, of course, I think it’s certain that if I purchase an Apple Watch 10 it will NOT be able to measure SaO2. Is it known whether the Series 10 watches are being released WITHOUT the hardware that would permit monitoring O2 saturation, or whether (assuming Apple resolves its patent dispute) a software of firmware update will restore that function?
Oops, I should have scanned further into TidBITS TALK, where I would have found a quotation from MacRumors that the patent Apple is alleged to have violated expires in 2028, so all I’d need to do is wait 4 years to be able to measure my O2 sat, but by that time I’d be 81 years old, or worse…
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First off, and I’m happy to be corrected, but when “blood oxygen” measurements were available on the Apple Watch I believe they measured SpO2 i.e. peripheral capillary oxygen saturation versus SaO2 for arterial oxygen saturation.
Next, how well can the sleep apnea detection work without a measurement of SpO2? Just a hour ago I arrived home after an overnight polysomnogram (sleep test) and the primary objective symptom for OSA (obstructive sleep apnea) as measured by fingertip pulse oximeter is…oxygen desaturation.
We don’t know for sure yet, but we can infer from the fact that the oxygen sensor works in S10 watches in other regions and that Apple hasn’t mentioned added a new sensor package without the oxygen sensor hardware specifically for the US that the hardware remains and that it’s just disabled by the OS.
Again, Apple has not said for sure. But I can’t believe that they would not turn the sensor back on for US users in that case.
Good question. As I understand it, O2 saturation is measured using LED(s) calibrated for certain specific colors and a corresponding light sensor. I would assume that Apple is using these for sensing many things beyond O2 saturation, so it would surprise me if they were removed from the device.
This is in addition to the fact that the feature is supported outside the US, and it would be a significant expense to have two different board designs. Much easier and cheaper to continue to enable/disable the feature in software.
There are many different measurements.
I had a sleep study done last year (an at-home procedure where they mailed me the equipment and I mailed it back after 3 days of testing). That study measured:
- PulseOx via a fingertip sensor
- A strap around my chest to directly measure respiration
- Something under my nose measuring (I think) breathing and snoring sounds
A watch is not going to be able to replicate this kind of test, but there may be ways (perhaps audio and vibration) to detect respiration during sleep, especially using a specially-designed ML model.
I’ll be looking forward to some future article where an expert can analyze the feature to determine how they are taking the measurement.
FWIW I just watched Marques Brownlee at 10:25 of…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lx11dy9J30 state that sleep apnea detection only uses the gyroscope.
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According to MacStories.com:
This detection will be based on a new metric called Breathing Disturbances, which will use the watch’s accelerometer to, in Apple’s words, ” detect small movements at the wrist associated with interruptions to normal respiratory patterns during sleep.” Apple says the data will be analyzed on a monthly basis to detect consistent signs of sleep apnea and send sleep apnea notifications.
FWIW, Apple also says about sleep apnea detection:
The sleep apnea notification algorithm was developed using advanced machine learning and an extensive data set of clinical-grade sleep apnea tests. The feature was then validated in a clinical study — unprecedented in size for sleep apnea technology. In the clinical validation study, every participant identified by the algorithm had at least mild sleep apnea.
Makes me wonder, as I approach 8 decades of life and surpass 4 decades using Macs, how much difficulty I’ll encounter attempting to integrate these new measures into all the bits of data regarding my health that get deposited in multiple places on my computer. For example (I have central sleep apnea) I get nightly reports from my machine that integrate over BlueTooth into the manufacturer’s App on my iPhone AND get uploaded to my sleep monitoring physician, but those don’t go into my Health App, my glucose monitoring app, or my BP/weight/body composition monitoring app. I think Apple does a pretty good job of making “room” for such data in its “Health” app, but that sharing certainly requires multi-vendor cooperation, which is at this point less than stellar.
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