TL; DR
- Fitbit has filed a patent for a smart ring that tracks blood oxygen and pressure levels.
- It would use a sensor that gives medical grade results.
- It could even include NFC for tap-to-pay services.
Google could one day have a fitness ring that can rival rivals like Oura. How TechRadar and Storable According to reports, the company’s Fitbit brand has filed for a U.S. patent for a smart ring that would track your blood oxygen and pressure using medical-grade sensor technology.
While many wearable devices use reflected light to measure blood oxygen, the Fitbit Ring acts like a clinical pulse oximeter, directing light through your skin to a photo detector. This should reduce noise and improve the accuracy of blood oxygen measurements while also allowing tracking of blood pressure and sugar levels, among other things.
As with other fitness ring technologies, the appeal of the Fitbit invention is clear – you could track your health with a more wearable device that is more discreet than a smartwatch or wrist-worn activity tracker. Highly accurate measurements would give the device an edge over competing rings that could compromise quality in terms of size or price.
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It is less certain whether this will become a practical reality. This is just a patent application, not a product roadmap, and there’s no guarantee you’ll see a Fitbit ring on store shelves. Filing shows that Fitbit has done some serious research into the concept, but not much more.
The competitive landscape is also hostile. Oura is doing well enough, but other clever ringmakers have fallen by the wayside. Motiv dropped its consumer ring shortly after buying it through a digital authentication startup, and even Amazon discontinued the Echo Loop instead of expanding sales beyond an invitation-only system. Fitbit and its parent company Google could simply decide that a fitness ring is too risky even with the latest technology.
