Fitbit Quietly Adds Sleep Apnoea Tracking On Its Wearables

Fitbit has quietly rolled out a new blood oxygen monitoring feature on some of its wearables, which monitors the variations of oxygen levels in the blood to better detect changes in breathing during sleep.

Fitbit, which was acquired by Google in November 2019, is adding this new feature by utilising the Sp02 sensor on its line of Versa smartwatches, its Ionic sports watch, and the Charge 3 fitness band.

The recently activated Sp02 sensor is able to generate an “Estimated Oxygen Variation” level during sleep, with the data having the potential to be used to work out if wearers are suffering from sleep apnoea.

The company began rolling out this new feature sometime last week, with users discovering the addition of a new graph in the Fitbit app for blood oxygen level monitoring.

“Fitbit is continuing to collect clinical data to test and develop FDA-cleared features for sleep apnoea,” a Fitbit spokesperson told Gizmodo.

“They expect to submit for FDA clearance soon and are maintaining a dialogue with the FDA throughout this process.”

Fitbit follows other wearables companies such as Garmin and Withings who already offers this feature to its users, while the worldwide market leader in wearables, Apple, remains behind in this space and does not support the capability.

Although, there have been reports that Apple are quietly jumping on the bandwagon after recently acquiring a sleep tracking sensor company.