The New Apple Watch Measures Your Blood Oxygen. Now What? - The New York Times
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`https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/technology/personaltech/new-apple-watch-blood-oxygen-level-
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`TECH FIX
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`The New Apple Watch Measures
`Your Blood Oxygen. Now What?
`Blood oxygen readings can be a useful indicator of wellness, but context is important — and so is medical advice from a
`doctor.
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`By
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`Brian X. Chen
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`Published Sept. 17, 2020 Updated Dec. 22, 2020
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`The new Apple Watch can be summed up in two words: blood oxygen.
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`The ability to measure your blood’s oxygen saturation — an overall indicator of wellness — is the most significant new
`feature in the Apple Watch Series 6, which was unveiled this week and becomes available on Friday. (The watch is otherwise
`not that different from last year’s Apple watch.) The feature is particularly timely with the coronavirus, because some
`patients in critical condition with Covid-19 have had low blood oxygen levels.
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`But how useful is this feature for all of us, really?
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`I had a day to test the new $399 Apple Watch to measure my blood oxygen level. The process was simple: You open the blood
`oxygen app on the device, keep your wrist steady and hit the Start button. After 15 seconds, during which a sensor on the
`back of the watch measures your blood oxygen level by shining lights onto your wrist, it shows your reading. In three tests,
`my blood oxygen level stood between 99 percent and 100 percent.
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`I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this information. So I asked two medical experts about the new feature. Both were
`cautiously optimistic about its potential benefits, especially for research. The ability to constantly monitor blood oxygen
`levels with some degree of accuracy, they said, could help people discover symptoms for health conditions like sleep apnea.
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`“Continuous recording of data can be really interesting to see trends,” said Cathy A. Goldstein, a sleep physician at the
`University of Michigan’s Medicine Sleep Clinic, who has researched data collected by Apple Watches.
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`But for most people who are relatively healthy, measuring blood oxygen on an everyday basis could be way more information
`than we need. Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, said he was concerned that blood
`oxygen readings could upset people and lead them to take unnecessary tests.
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`“It can be positive and negative,” he cautioned. “It could keep people out of doctors’ offices and at home and give them
`reassurance, but it could also create a lot of anxiety.”
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`That’s important to remember as smart watches gain new health-monitoring features that give us information about
`ourselves that we have to figure out how to use. When the Apple Watch Series 4 introduced an electrical heart sensor for
`people to take electrocardiograms in 2018, it was useful for people with known heart conditions to monitor their health — but
`doctors warned that it was also a novelty that should not be used to jump to conclusions or for people to self-diagnose heart
`attacks or other conditions.
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`And so, here we are again.
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`What to Know About Blood Oxygen Levels
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`https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/technology/personaltech/new-apple-watch-blood-ox...
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`3/22/2022
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`MASITC_01401881
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`MASIMO 2064
`Apple v. Masimo
`IPR2022-01291
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`The New Apple Watch Measures Your Blood Oxygen. Now What? - The New York Times
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`Page 2 of 3
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`The sensor and app measure the oxygen saturation of
`blood. Apple
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`A healthy person will usually have blood oxygen levels in the mid- to high 90s. When people have health conditions such as
`lung disease, sleep disorders or respiratory infections, levels can dip to the 60s to the low 90s, Dr. Goldstein said.
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`If you buy the Apple Watch and have access to information about your blood oxygen levels all the time, it’s important to have
`a framework for thinking about the data. Most importantly, you should have a primary care physician with whom you can
`share the measurements so that you can place it into context with your overall health, like your age and pre-existing
`conditions, Dr. Goldstein said.
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`But when it comes to medical advice and diagnosis, always defer to a doctor. If you notice a big dip in your blood oxygen
`level, it is not necessarily a reason to panic, and you should talk to your doctor to decide whether to investigate. And if you
`have symptoms of illness, such as fever or a cough, a normal blood oxygen reading shouldn’t be a reason to skip talking to a
`medical professional, Dr. Goldstein said.
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`Let a medical expert — not your watch — create the action plan.
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`Blood oxygen monitoring may be more useful for people who are already known to have health problems, Dr. Weiss said. For
`example, if someone with a history of heart failure saw lower saturation levels in their blood oxygen during exercise, that
`information could be shared with a doctor, who could then modify the treatment plan.
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`The information could also be used to determine whether a sick person should go to the hospital. “If a patient called me and
`said, ‘I have Covid and my oxygen level is at 80 percent,’ I would say, ‘Go to the hospital,”’ Dr. Weiss said.
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`So Why Should I Care?
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`The sensor on the back crystal of the watch has LEDs and photodiodes. Apple
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`https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/technology/personaltech/new-apple-watch-blood-ox...
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`3/22/2022
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`MASITC_01401882
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`MASIMO 2064
`Apple v. Masimo
`IPR2022-01291
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`The New Apple Watch Measures Your Blood Oxygen. Now What? - The New York Times
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`In the end, health data on its own isn’t immediately useful, and we have to decide how to make the best use of the
`information. Apple doesn’t recommend what to do or how to feel about the information, just as a bathroom scale doesn’t tell
`you you’re overweight and give you a diet plan.
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`If you find that the data makes you more anxious, you could simply disable the feature, Dr. Goldstein said.
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`But even if blood oxygen measurement sounds gimmicky today, it’s important to keep an open mind about how new health-
`monitoring technologies might benefit us in the future. Both Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Weiss pointed to sleep apnea as an area
`where wearable computers might benefit people. The condition, which causes breathing problems during sleep, affects
`millions of Americans, but most people never know that they have it.
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`It’s a bit of a catch-22. If you had symptoms of sleep apnea, which include lower blood oxygen levels, your doctor would order
`a test. But you probably wouldn’t catch the symptoms while you were asleep, so a study would never be ordered.
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`The Apple watch will periodically measure your blood oxygen level in the background, including when you are asleep. So if
`we gather data about ourselves while we’re slumbering, we might discover something unknown about ourselves — or not.
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`“Until we start doing it, we don’t know whether or not this information can be valuable,” Dr. Goldstein said.
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`https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/technology/personaltech/new-apple-watch-blood-ox...
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`3/22/2022
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`MASITC_01401883
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`CX-1301
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`Page 3 of 3
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`MASIMO 2064
`Apple v. Masimo
`IPR2022-01291
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