Apple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo. Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone, using the sensors from Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a red light at 660 nm in 2020.
The iPhone will now calculate the ratio of absorbed red to infrared light, then apply calibration constants from experimental data to estimate blood oxygen saturation.
I would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather than engage in a licensing deal.
spogbiper · 17m ago
25 employees including the CTO, and then bought a building nearby to Masimo's office for them to work in. At least according to the CEO of Masimo in public statements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg
thebruce87m · 9m ago
Sounds good for the employees, so go Apple?
spogbiper · 5m ago
Yes, very good for the employees. Apple even offered them 2x their salaries to leave Masimo.
sneak · 24m ago
The whole concept of software patents is a hack; as I understand it algorithms as a rule cannot be patented, so the system running the algorithm is patented instead. This seems to illustrate the absurdity of that workaround.
Angostura · 46m ago
> The iPhone will now calculate the ratio of absorbed red to infrared light, then apply calibration constants from experimental data to estimate blood oxygen saturation.
> sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and calculated on the paired iPhone
BugsJustFindMe · 25m ago
Phenomenal that the patent is only violated by doing it with the watch cpu but not by funneling the data to a separate cpu. The surest sign that it's a bullshit patent.
unglaublich · 31m ago
Crazy that this is a 'patent'. We did this experiment in high school 30 years ago.
spogbiper · 14m ago
almost as crazy as a patent for a rectangle with rounded corners
mandeepj · 5m ago
Hopefully blood glucose monitoring will come soon as well
CalChris · 24m ago
Massimo invented this technology (yay Massimo!) in the 90s yet their Japanese patents [1] weren't considered prior art (WTF?) because of technical legal reasons.
The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525 nm) and infrared (850–940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a red light at 660 nm in 2020.
The iPhone will now calculate the ratio of absorbed red to infrared light, then apply calibration constants from experimental data to estimate blood oxygen saturation.
More detailed writeup on how the technology works is here: https://www.empirical.health/metrics/oxygen/
Sorry, maybe I missed it - but source for this?
> sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and calculated on the paired iPhone
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002542493A5/en%EF%BF%BC
So I suppose if Massimo is going to use a technical legality to extend then Apple can use a technical legality to avoid.