Google announced the release of a new Health Guardian feature that will work across qualifying Pixel Watches and Fitbit Air.
Health Guardian is a collection of health and safety technologies that makes use of physiological data that is gathered in the background to offer insights into long-term health patterns, such as blood pressure, insulin resistance, and sleep breathing quality.
Additionally, the company unveiled a new breathing emergency detection tool that can recognize when a user experiences a serious or prolonged decline in oxygen saturation, such as during severe pneumonia, choking, or an unintentional drug overdose. The Pixel Watch will first have this capability in a few European nations, reports MobiHealthNews.
The devices' AI algorithms look at physiological data over a period of weeks to identify changes in metabolic health and assess an individual's insulin resistance, which impacts how well the body absorbs energy from food.
According to Google, the insulin feature, which makes use of an AI model trained on more than 1 trillion minutes of data from 5 million opted-in users, is intended to assist users in early detection of changes linked to insulin resistance so wearers can, if necessary, modify their diet, sleep patterns, or level of movement to improve their metabolic health. According to Google, the feature is not meant to identify or treat diabetes.
According to Google, the feature estimates blood pressure trends over time by passively monitoring a wearer's pulse and mobility patterns. The insights are intended to assist the wearer in determining whether lifestyle modifications or medical consultation are necessary.
WavesFM, a foundation model trained on billions of minutes of unprocessed heart and movement data, was used to train the blood pressure trends model.
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The goal of the tech giant's sleep breathing feature is to provide users with information about their breathing patterns when they are asleep so they may assess longer-term breathing habits that might be impacting their energy and recuperation throughout the day.
According to Google, the wearer can examine their patterns to decide whether to change their daily routine and sleeping conditions or, if necessary, consult a medical specialist.
"A first of its kind, opt-in feature on Pixel Watch, breathing emergency detection can offer a lifeline by recognizing when a person's blood oxygen level drops dangerously low. If they become unresponsive, it automatically calls emergency services and their emergency contacts so they can receive potentially life-saving care," the tech giant said in a statement.
"Breathing emergency detection uses an advanced, AI-based algorithm to analyze signals from your watch's heart rate, motion and altitude sensors. To try and minimize accidental check-ins, it verifies that you're in a low-motion state without rapid altitude changes. And to reduce false notifications from conditions like sleep apnea, it also confirms that you haven't been asleep for more than 30 minutes."
The feature will not detect emergencies after the wearer has been asleep for 30 minutes.
Every month, wearers can see all regionally accessible trends in the Google Health app along with information about significant changes that have taken place.
Google's breathing emergency detection technology will not yet be available in the United States, but it will first be available on the Pixel Watch 4 and the recently revealed Pixel Watch 5 in a number of European nations.
Later this fall, the Google Health app will introduce its insulin resistance and blood pressure trends capabilities, which will work with the Fitbit Air, Google Pixel Watch 3, Google Pixel Watch 4, and Google Pixel Watch 5.
Google also announced Sign-to-Text, a new feature on its Pixel phones that leverages Gemini to translate one-handed or two-handed sign language into audio. The speaker's words can then be translated into words for the hard of hearing by someone speaking back to the phone. Pixel now offers Sign-to-Text.
