Samsung is looking to change the way its wearables handle heart health data, with a new patent aimed at improving its device’s ability to monitor for irregular heartbeats and signs of atrial fibrillation. The existing smartwatches (and most of the best smartwatches in general) can do this by performing ECG or electrocardiogram scans, but because ECG scans must be actively initiated by the user, it is difficult to use the data to make a to paint a more holistic picture. of a user’s heart rate.
However, thanks to a new Samsung patent, that could all change. Spotted by Wareablea new US patent suggests that the company wants to “translate PPG signals into corresponding ECG waveforms.” Essentially, Samsung wants to convert the continuous heart rate data it normally collects into ECG data.
Last year, Samsung received FDA approval for passive atrial fibrillation, or AFib monitoring, on the Galaxy Watch 5, and this new patent would be a natural extension of that. By continuously touching your heart rate, you can plot a regular ECG, whether you are actively working on it or not.
This would be achieved through a generative AI system that would create a better relationship between heart rate rhythms and ECG data. This relationship is known in scientific terms as a “first order Markov relationship”.
Samsung notes that when checking for AFib, false positives may occur when translating the heart rate data into ECG results, but this will be countered by “incorporating prior knowledge in terms of probabilistic graphical models”, or by checking the data with using AI.
Which devices get it?
It’s worth emphasizing that this is still a patent, and it’s not entirely unusual for companies to patent ideas that are years away from being realized – or that never become reality at all.
If you have an existing Samsung Galaxy Watch with an ECG feature (that’s the Watch Active 2 and Watch 3 and above), you might have a chance to run this algorithm when it arrives.
It might be more reasonable, given that these devices are a few years old, to expect this to come to the upcoming Galaxy Watch 7, the refreshed Galaxy Watch 4, or the rumored Galaxy Watch Ultra.
Interestingly, the Samsung Galaxy Ring is also expected to offer ECG functionality, meaning Samsung’s smart ring could be one of the first to benefit from the new technology.