Blood Oxygen Application

2022: Mobile App Announcement

On September 19, 2022, it became known that a group of American researchers created a program that allows smartphones to determine the level of blood oxygen saturation up to 70%.

In a study conducted by specialists from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, participants needed to place a finger over the camera and flash of a smartphone that runs a program to decrypt blood oxygen levels.

A mobile application has been created to determine the level of oxygen in the blood using a smartphone camera

Six participants aged 20 to 34 were selected for the study. Among them were three women and three men. To get the data to train and test the algorithm, the team suggested that each participant put a standard pulse oximeter on one finger and then place the other finger on the same hand above the camera and smartphone flash.

During testing, experts introduced a controlled mixture of nitrogen and oxygen to each subject in order to artificially reduce the level of oxygen in the blood. In 80% of cases, the smartphone correctly determined the oxygen level of the subject. The team received from all six participants more than 10 thousand readings of blood oxygen levels in the range from 61% to 100%.

{{quote 'Other similar smartphone applications for determining such indicators have been developed with the requirement to hold your breath. But people are uncomfortable and have to hold their breath for about a minute, and it's not enough for blood oxygen levels to go down enough to represent the full range of clinically relevant data, said study co-author Jason Hoffman of the University of Washington. In our study, we were able to collect 15 minutes of data from each subject. Our data shows that smartphones can do this task well. }}

Blood Oxygen Application

{{quote 'Thanks to this, the user can measure many indicators for free or for a small fee using his own device, added study co-author Dr. Matthew Thompson, professor of family medicine. Ideally, this information could be freely transmitted directly to the doctor's office. This will be really useful for conducting telemedicine sessions so that the doctor can quickly determine whether the patient should go to the emergency room or whether they can continue treatment at home and later make an appointment with their healthcare provider^[1] }}

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