Unlike rivals Apple and Samsung, Google has only recently delved into smartwatches and wellness, but is looking to make up ground with a new feature that could save a person's life — and put the Galaxy Watch 3 on a par with some of the best smartwatches.
During the debut of the Pixel Watch 3 at the Made by Google event, the company announced that its newest smartwatch will have a Loss of Pulse Detection, a wellness tool that senses when the wearer is experiencing a loss of pulse.
Loss of Pulse is a way to describe a health emergency where the heart is not being properly. It can be caused by a myriad of dangerous health events but common ones include cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, circulatory failure and overdosing.
According to Google, if the watch detects the loss of pulse, it will send an alert with a timer that the wear must respond. If the timer runs down without a response an automated voice message is sent to emergency services with your location included.
Google has been careful to say that the feature may not be detect every instance of a loss of pulse and isn't built for a specific health event. They also note that the feature is "not intended for those with pre-existing heart conditions or those who require cardiac monitoring."
Still, it could be a way to way to improve intervention. According to the CDC, more than 350,000 people suffer from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest every year, with between 60 and 80% of those dying before making it to a hospital. Google mentioned overdoses, and opioid deaths have gone up in recent years with the National Institute on Drug Abuse reporting that overdose deaths have basically quintupled since 1999.
"We hope this can be an airbag moment or smoke detector moment something that can become standard to help keep us safe, says Dr. Jake Sunshine, a research scientist, in a video released by Google.
Google says that it worked with cardiologists to design the feature and emergency services crews to get feedback to help it integrate into emergency systems, especially with dispatchers.
Other wearables including Google's older Pixel Watches, the Apple Watch and Samsung's Galaxy Watch 7 have safety features like sleep apnea detection. The Apple Watch 4 and subsequent generations have been able to detect atrial fibrillation — and is approved by the FDA. Similarly, the Galaxy Watch 6 and newer devices also have Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification (IHRN), but the Loss of Pulse Detection will be a first for any smartwatch.
The loss of pulse detection feature will launch in the EU and United Kingdom first. According to a support page, it is not yet available in U.S. as the feature has not been cleared or even evaluated by the FDA. If the FDA hasn't even looked at the feature yet, it's quite unclear when it will actually become available in the U.S.
The watch launches officially in less than a month on September 10, which probably isn't enough time for the regulatory body to look at the feature.
