As indicated during the Pixel Watch 5 launch last month, Google has now begun introducing blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends, and sleep breathing quality metrics.
Health Guardian serves as Google’s umbrella name for the Pixel Watch collection of “proactive health and safety tools.” The offering includes Breathing Emergency Detection, which is available in Europe for the Pixel Watch 4 and 5.
The blood pressure trends tool passively evaluates your pulse and movement patterns over a period of one month. Its purpose is to help users identify “persistent higher cardiovascular trends early.” It does not require a cuff or manual calibration and was trained on billions of minutes of unprocessed heart and movement data. At least “5 consecutive days in a week” of information is required.
Insulin resistance trends examine physiological information collected over multiple weeks to monitor changes in metabolic health without the need for a blood draw. Insulin resistance affects the way your body takes in energy from food, while Google requires at least 7 days of data during a month. The feature is powered by Google’s largest sensor foundational model, which underwent pre-training with more than 1 trillion minutes of data gathered from 5 million opted-in users.
The two trend-based health insights will be displayed in the Google Health app on the first day of every month.
At the same time, sleep breathing quality metrics will monitor changes in breathing throughout the night. When you wake up, the app will show how much time you spent breathing optimally, while a monthly summary will highlight patterns over a longer period.
Owners of the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5 will be able to configure all three features through the Google Health app beginning this week. These capabilities will be available at no cost on those three devices, with the initial trend reports expected in early October.
For Google Health Premium subscribers, the same three features are also scheduled to arrive on the Fitbit Air “later this year.”