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Masimo CEO: Apple Watch Blood Oxygen Sensor is Not Reliable, Customers Are 'Better Off Without It'
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Medical devices have very strict testing for accuracy. They have to be approved by regulatory agencies. Thatās not the case for any of the health features on the Apple Watch.
Not likely. Theyāve been around a long time and their primary products are medical grade pulse oximeters.
The CEO's claim is that Apple is marketing it as a medical pulse oximeter. That is blatantly false. Apple explicitly marketed it as a wellness feature. The company has been clear from day one that "[m]easurements taken with the Blood Oxygen app are not intended for medical use and are only designed for general fitness and wellness purposes."
Plenty of statements stating the Apple Watch is not accurate too. But they must all be lying, right??? Because Apple does no wrong? š¤Æ
I've read up quite a bit on these health sensor gimmicks in a variety of products, not just the Apple Watch. I bought a Garmin Fenix 7 Pro recently and many of its readings varied wildly from my Apple Watch. I read a lot on these algorithms and how unreliable they are. In the end, I returned the Garmin and decided it's a lot more mentally healthy to not use such products versus constantly obsessing over metrics that are likely inaccurate in the first place.
The company is very well-known in healthcare for its technology. They have a number of patents, and Apple clearly violated those patents. Itās a pretty cut and dried situation.
Exactly. The same goes for the Apple Watchās calorie count, which is in no way accurate. (No device can accurately count calories, and using calories as any sort of metric makes very little sense.)
I don't object to Massimo wanting to enforce its patents, but DO object to it denigrating the Apple product. We used my Watch 7 pulse ox with a really available finger monitor throughout the Covid pandemic and the watch was almost always between 1-2 percent points of the finger tip monitor - anecdotal but good enough for our purposes.
I'd be careful about saying Apple "clearly violated" those patents, since quite a few of them have been invalidated and a debate is ongoing about whether or not the remaining ones are...
"Clearly violated" is still being decided, supposedly.
Hundreds of Chinese and Asian manufacturers use the same technology and no one takes them to court. Apple has this problem because it has billions and you can use it as a marketing tool to sue Apple.
US law is sick.
So...the Apple Watch isn't FDA cleared. I honestly didn't realize that, not sure how apple has been able to market it without that (I bet it's buried in some deep asterisk).
But it makes the removal of the feature less impactful IMHO, and from one perspective I agree with the Masimo CEO - if it's inaccurate, it's better gone than there.
But it makes the removal of the feature less impactful IMHO, and from one perspective I agree with the Masimo CEO - if it's inaccurate, it's better gone than there.
Not true, the ECG and irregular rhythm detection features have been cleared by the FDA.
No it's not. It's FDA "cleared". Not "approved".
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/13/...es-4-ekg-fda-approved-vs-cleared-meaning-safe
If they do, then they're stealing IP. Trying to enforce that is like playing whack-a-mole, and tracking down the bad actors is essentially impossible.
The O2 sensor hasn't been FDA cleared; the ECG and irregular rhythm notifications have.
How do you know the Chinese and Asian manufacturers use the same patented technology? Thereās more than one way to measure blood oxygen using lights.
If it is not reliable and they are stealing Masimo IP apparently, by causality is it not the case that Masimo technology is also not reliable?
nothing is clear nor cut and dry til there is a final ruling, and that may be far out ...
