Google's Pixel Watch 3 smartwatches, which now come in two sizes, include a new, possibly life-saving feature: loss of pulse detection. At the Made by Google 2024 event on Tuesday, the company announced the watch's new ability to detect this type of health emergency, as well as other new tools and features such as a "readiness" score for training, a cardio load score, and a personalized daily target load, which combines the former and latter metrics to show how much intensity you can handle each day.
The removal of pulse sensing is a more attractive inclusion, even for non-athletes.
According to Google, a loss of pulse is a health occurrence that can occur to anyone and refers to when the heart is "not beating in a life-sustaining fashion." This could be caused by a number of medical disorders, such as cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, circulatory failure, an overdose, poisoning, and others.
The business stated that while we now have the infrastructure in place to get people medical treatment as promptly as possible, it is all based on the assumption that someone will be present to make a call to emergency medical services on their behalf. However, many health emergencies occur while you are alone and no one is there to help. In fact, more than half of the time, participants attend these activities alone.
If the Pixel Watch 3 detects a loss of pulse emergency using this first-of-its-kind capability, it will notify emergency medical services and relay vital information such as the user's location, allowing them to receive rapid medical attention. (In the event of a false positive, a timer on the watch face will count down, allowing users to cancel the call.)
Google noted that the watch detects a loss of pulse event not just by looking for the pulse itself, but also by analyzing other physiological and mobility data and linking them together using a clever AI-powered algorithm that stays on the watch.
“We hope this can be an airbag moment or smoke detector moment — something that can become standard to help keep us safe when life may bring the unexpected,” Google said.
The loss of pulse feature will initially be available on Pixel Watch 3, starting in select EU countries and the U.K., with more regions to come.