Google is adding the heart rate and respiratory monitoring feature to the Fit app via Pixel phones this month, and plans to add it to other Android phones in the future.
Both features rely on the smartphone camera, which measures the breathing rate by monitoring the rise and fall of the user's chest, and the heart rate by tracking the change of color as blood moves through the fingertips.
The company said that "the features aim to allow users to track their health in general only, and it cannot evaluate or diagnose medical conditions."
To measure respiratory rate (the number of breaths a person breathes per minute) using the app, users point the front camera of the phone at the head and chest, and to measure their heart rate they place their finger on the back camera.
"The doctor calculates the patient's respiratory rate by watching his chest rise and fall, and Google's feature simulates this procedure through machine learning technology," said product manager at Google Health (Google Health) Jack Poe in a press briefing.
Google's heart rate monitoring is similar to a feature that Samsung included in a number of older Galaxy smartphones, including the Galaxy S10, but removed the feature on the S10E and S20 phones. the most recent.
Heart rate data from the Google app will be less comprehensive than the types of readings a person can get from a wearable device, which can continuously monitor their heart rate while a person lives their daily life.
"The feature that can check these metrics on demand is still a useful tool, and anything that increases the number of measurements a person has of their heart or breathing rate is important," Bo said.
And Google chose to integrate these functions into the smartphone to make it accessible to the largest number of people, as many people at present do not have things like wearable devices, but they benefit from the ability to track breathing rate, heart rate, etc.
Internal studies on Pixel phones showed that the respiratory rate feature was accurate within one breath per minute for all people with or without health conditions, and the heart rate feature was accurate to within 2%.
The team studies how well the features work on other phones before making them available outside of a pixel, and the features are now being described as tools that can be used to monitor overall health.
Google does not claim to be able to perform a medical function, which is why it does not need permission from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add it to the app.