A brand new function on the Pixel Watch 5 isn’t designed to present customers further routine well being knowledge. As a substitute, it’s meant to assist them once they’re unable to assist themselves.
Google’s newly introduced respiratory emergency detection function makes use of AI to research alerts from the watch’s coronary heart charge, movement and altitude sensors to detect indicators of a respiratory emergency. If it detects one, the wearer has 30 seconds to cancel the alert earlier than the watch mechanically calls emergency providers and alerts their emergency contacts.
Google says the function may present life-saving help throughout incidents resembling extreme pneumonia, an unintentional drug overdose, or choking. Along with the Pixel Watch 5, the function may also be obtainable on the Pixel Watch 4 when the function rolls out.
However People must wait. The function has not but been cleared or evaluated by the Meals and Drug Administration and is at present solely obtainable in some European international locations. A US launch date has not but been introduced.
How the respiratory emergency detection works
The function combines knowledge from sensors within the watch and an AI-based algorithm.
“The optical sensor makes use of inexperienced, purple and infrared gentle to estimate blood oxygen ranges and determine extreme, persistent drops,” Pramod Rudrapatna, Google senior product supervisor for well being, advised CNET in an e-mail. “The accelerometer appears for extended low motion, whereas the barometer helps account for environmental components resembling excessive altitude, the place oxygen saturation can naturally be decrease. These alerts are analyzed collectively by on-device machine studying fashions to find out whether or not they’re according to a possible respiratory emergency whereas minimizing false alerts.”
To cut back false positives, Google says the function may also make sure the wearer hasn’t been asleep for greater than half-hour throughout the detected incident in order that circumstances resembling sleep apnea gained’t intrude with the readings.
“That mixture is a great method to minimize down false alarms,” says Dr. Lindsey Rosman, assistant professor of medication within the division of cardiology on the College of North Carolina Faculty of Medication. She provides that photoplethysmography (or PPG, the sunshine sensors typically present in wearables) has identified limitations that may have an effect on readings, however “requiring stillness alongside the oxygen drop doubtless helps cut back these points [and] improves reliability.”
Rosman, who additionally research the psychological impacts of cardiac wearables, warns that alerting individuals to a life-threatening occasion they’ll’t independently confirm is a double-edged sword.
“It will possibly save lives, however it could additionally drive actual well being anxiousness and hypervigilance, even when the alert is a false optimistic,” she stated.
If customers don’t wish to use this function, they’ll flip it off of their settings.
Respiratory emergency detection is considered one of 4 new options that come beneath the Pixel’s Well being Guardian umbrella. The opposite three monitor tendencies for insulin resistance, blood stress, and sleep respiratory high quality.
In 2025, Google rolled out a function known as loss of pulse detection on the Pixel 3 Watch within the US. That function tracks the wearer’s pulse, whereas respiratory emergency detection focuses on blood oxygen ranges and patterns. Nevertheless, in the event that they work as promised, each options may work collectively to detect the identical sort of well being emergency, resembling an unintentional overdose. Lack of pulse detection has been cleared by the FDA and is obtainable now.
The Pixel Watch 5 is available for pre-order.
