Apple is developing at least two new health-specific features that will expand the Apple Watch in the future. For the first time, the Apple Watch will add a feature to detect blood oxygen levels. Blood oxygen levels between 95% and 100% are considered healthy, and oxygen levels below 80% in the blood can cause impaired heart and brain function. The risk of breathing or cardiac arrest is common after persistent low oxygen saturation. To that end, Apple is developing new health notifications based on key metrics. When the Apple Watch detects low oxygen saturation below a certain threshold, the notification triggers an alarm, similar to the current heart rate notification. Oxygen saturation is not clear what hardware and software is required for blood oxygen testing and notification. New health features may require future Apple Watch Series 6 hardware. This may also happen in the fall for all or newer Apple Watch models with Apple watch OS 7. The original Apple Watch hardware was thought to be able to measure blood oxygen levels with a built-in heart rate monitor. Apple has upgraded its heart rate monitor with the Apple Watch Series 4 to add electrocardiogram capabilities, but the Apple Watch doesn’t yet offer blood oxygen measurement. When it comes to the ECG feature, Apple is working to eliminate the current weakness of the current ECG feature. The Apple Watch Series 4 and Apple Watch Series 5 currently lead to uncertain ECG readings with heartbeats between 100 and 120 beats per minute. Future software or hardware updates will remove this limitation through an upgraded version of the ECG application. Apple is also developing built-in sleep tracking for future sleep apps.
Apple Watch blood oxygen detection in iOS 14.
