Mastodawn

DrBob, 🧠 Mechanic Aug 14, 2025

Blood Oxygen (pulse ox) is back on the Apple Watch (Finally!)

"Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for some #AppleWatch Series 9, Series 10, and #Apple Watch Ultra 2 users through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming later today."

Users will have access to the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature by updating their paired iPhone to iOS 18.6.1 and their Apple Watch to watchOS 11.6.1.

Other watch options include ECG, #SleepApnea Notifications, Fall Detection, sleep tracking, wrist temperature sensing, Vitals, Noise, Medications, and Mindfulness.

#pulseox #bloodoxygen
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/08/an-update-on-blood-oxygen-for-apple-watch-in-the-us/

Markus Birth Sep 24, 2024

Several years ago, I had a Garmin Fenix 5 Plus watch for a while. I’ve turned that into a D2 Delta watch to unlock all possible features. During that time, I also switched from my beloved BlackBerry KEY2 Android phone to an iPhone. And as a former fan of Google Health, I liked the way of how iOS unites all personal medical data in Apple Health.

Garmin’s Connect app already supports pushing the data collected by the watch into Apple Health. However, this doesn’t include the SpO₂ aka. pulse ox aka. blood oxygen measurements. I’ve found feature requests from as early as mid 2018 that asked for syncing these values into Apple Health. One with a bit more feedback – even from Garmin employees – was from early 2021. But even in 2024, Garmin doesn’t seem to be interested in implementing this.

So I came up with an alternative way.

As all data goes into your Garmin Connect account, I had to find a way to pull it out of there. It turned out I wasn’t the first one with that idea. cyberjunky aka. Ron from The Netherlands already built a nice Python library to communicate with the Garmin Connect website. I’ve used this to regularly pull all my PulseOx data from Garmin Connect into a local SQLite database.

From there, I needed to find a way to get it into Apple Health. Turns out, Apple’s own Shortcuts app does support writing any kind of record into Apple Health. Now I just needed to bridge the gap between my SQLite database and Apple Shortcuts.

For that, I’ve created a small PHP script that serves the records from the last 24 hours in JSON format.

Then, I’ve created a Shortcut that pulls that information via a web request and also the records from the past 24 hours from Apple Health, compares both, and adds the missing records into Apple Health. And it worked beautifully until I got rid of the Garmin in favour of an Apple Watch.

The Python and PHP code is here. The Shortcut can be installed from here. Have fun.

https://blog.mbirth.uk/2024/09/24/syncing-garmin-pulse-ox-data-to-apple-health.html

#apple #appleHealth #garmin #garminFenix #pulseox #spo2

Pimp my Garmin: Turning your Fenix 5 Plus into a D2 Delta pilot watch – blog.mbirth.uk

Deborah Rose ❌👑May 15, 2024

People with darker skin are 32% more likely to have pulse oximeter readings overestimate oxygen levels, report says | CNN #PulseOx
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/health/pulse-oximeter-skin-tone/index.html

Jack Iwashyna 🫁Mar 22, 2023

I had forgotten about this poll, with over >1000 votes. I feel confident that, regardless of the sampling bias, the results are reasonably representative of #ICU clinicians and #PulseOx

Jack Iwashyna 🫁Jan 9, 2023

OK, this #JAMA Viewpoint on #PulseOx is amazing

But I think it basically says "It's weird that nobody has sued hospitals for continuing to use racially biased pulse ox's. Like, they seem pretty liable to us. And they don't really have a defense"

It's JAMA, so there's more nuance than that, but also not that much more

Show thread

Jack Iwashyna 🫁Jan 9, 2023

"This is a new approach to 1557 liability, as clinical algorithms were not mentioned in the authorizing statutory language. If finalized, the rule would arguably create greater enforcement risk for hospitals that continue to use pulse oximeters that perform less accurately on dark-skinned patients."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2800468

#PulseOx #HealthEquity

Pulse Oximeters and Violation of Federal Antidiscrimination Law

This Viewpoint discusses how some pulse oximeters can provide incorrect oxygen saturation data for dark-skinned patients compared with light-skinned patients, describes the reasons that biased oximeters remained in use, and highlights why a rule recently proposed by the US Department of Health and...

Jack Iwashyna 🫁Jan 6, 2023

In “stable” French ICU patients

“Moderate hypoxemia (SaO2 86–90% or PaO2 55–60 mmHg) was detected in 92%, 33%, 42% and 11% of the cases with Nonin, Nellcor, Masimo and Philips respectively”

And that is with “skin pigmentation evaluated by Fitzpatrick scale showed 96.2% of subjects were light skin (types 1 and 2).”

https://rc.rcjournal.com/content/early/2023/01/03/respcare.10582.abstract

#PulseOx

Accuracy of multiple pulse oximeter brands in stable critically ill patients - Oxygap study

An accurate SpO2 value is critical in order to optimally titrate oxygen delivery to patients and to follow oxygenation guidelines. Limited prospective data exist on real world performance of pulse oximeters in critically ill patients. The objective of this study was to assess accuracy and bias of the SpO2 values measured by several oximeters in hospitalized patients. We included stable adults in the intensive care unit with an arterial catheter in place. Main exclusion criteria were poor SpO2 signal, and SpO2 > 96%. In each subject, we simultaneously evaluated four oximeters: Nonin (Plymouth, MN) embedded in the FreeO2 device (Oxynov, QC, Canada), Masimo (Radical 7, Irvine, CA), Philips (FAST, Eindhoven, Netherlands), and Nellcor (N600, Pleasanton, CA). Arterial blood gases were drawn and simultaneously, each oximeters’ SpO2 values were collected. SpO2 values were compared to the reference (SaO2 value) to determine bias and accuracy. The ability for oximeters to detect hypoxemia and the impact of oximeters on oxygen titration were evaluated. We included 193 subjects (153 men, mean age 66·3 years) in whom 211 sets of measurements were performed. The skin pigmentation evaluated by Fitzpatrick scale showed 96.2% of subjects were light skin (types 1 and 2). One oximeter overestimated SaO2 (Philips, +0·9%) while the three others underestimated SaO2 (Nonin -3·1%, Nellcor -0·3%, Masimo -0·2%). SaO2 was underestimated with Nonin oximeter in 91·3% of the cases while it was overestimated in 55·2% of the cases with Philips oximeter. Moderate hypoxemia (SaO2 86–90% or PaO2 55–60 mmHg) was detected in 92%, 33%, 42% and 11% of the cases with Nonin, Nellcor, Masimo and Philips respectively. We found significant bias and moderate accuracy between the tested oximeters and the arterial blood gases, in the studied population. These discrepancies may have important clinical impact on the detection of hypoxemia and management of oxygen therapy.

American Association for Respiratory Care

Jack Iwashyna 🫁Dec 31, 2022

Apple Watch blood oxygen app inaccurate on people of color: lawsuit

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/12/27/apple-watch-blood-oxygen-oximeter-dark-skin-lawsuit/10955942002/

#PulseOx

Apple sued over alleged ineffectiveness of Apple Watch's blood oxygen reader on people of color

A new lawsuit alleges that the Blood Oxygen app on the Apple Watch provides inaccurate readings for people with darker skin.

USA TODAY

Jack Iwashyna 🫁Dec 7, 2022

Prof @dynarski want to help me say the same thing over and over again until it sticks?

#CNN article reviewing:

- More data on #RacialBias in #PulseOx devices in sick patients

- FDA saying “The agency considers this a high priority and we will work expeditiously to consider the Panel’s input and determine the appropriate next steps" [but nothing yet]

- Manufacturers saying "we still think it's not true in our internal data in volunteers who aren't sick"

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/07/health/pulse-oximeters-inaccuracies