The FDA has cleared a Samsung Galaxy Watch feature that monitors for signs of atrial fibrillation throughout the day, as announced on the Samsung website.
The Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification (IHRN) feature complements the electrocardiogram (ECG) readings already available in watches like the Galaxy Watch 5.
The classic method to check for signs of atrial fibrillation in a wearable involves analysis of the electrical signals of the heart. You lightly touch the home button, which acts as an electrode, as do metallic contacts on the back of the watch, completing a circuit through the body.
ECG features like this in wearables are great, but they rely on active participation in the process and staying very still for a good 30 seconds or so.
Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification avoids this by working in the background. You don’t have to remember to check in with the feature. As long as it’s switched on, it will do its thing.
“We’re excited to announce that Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification, designed to help millions of people around the world who may not be aware of a potential heart risk, has been cleared by the FDA,” says Hon Pak, Samsung Vice President and Head of its Digital Health Team.
How Samsung’s Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification feature works
Samsung says the feature uses the Watch 5’s BioActive Sensor. However, this is not a particularly helpful wording. In Samsung’s marketing spiel, the BioActive Sensor represents three sensor types: the optical heart rate reader, the electrical ECG and the Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis, which operates in a similar fashion to ECG and measures body composition.
There’s a degree of obfuscation here. However, all-day atrial fibrillation monitoring is already offered in Fitbit and Apple Watches, and Fitbit offers a more illuminating description of how its take on this concept works.
“We look at your beat-to-beat measurements to check for irregularities. Beat-to-beat measurements indicate how quickly one heart beat comes after the other . It’s typically measured in milliseconds (ms) and converted into beats per minute (bpm). Normally, these measurements are relatively predictable and smooth. Big increases or decreases (over 10 bpm) in a short period of time may be considered irregular,” reads the Fitbit website.
Samsung’s approach is likely to use similar techniques with the optical heart rate reader, because the watch cannot establish a circuit through the body without asking you to press the top part of the watch — required to use the electrical heart reader.
“If a certain number of consecutive measurements are irregular, Galaxy Watch warns the user of potential AFib activity, prompting them to take an ECG using their watch for a more accurate measurement,” Samsung’s announcement reads. Making the passive reading a precursor to the active kind will also help tone down the worry caused by any potential false positive alerts.
Samsung says the Irregular Heart Rhythm Notifications will be part of the One UI 5 Watch software, and will launch on the next generation on Samsung watches later this year, before coming to existing models like the Galaxy Watch 5 family.
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