[Software]Google will measure how you breathe thanks to your mobile camera

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In Spain, portable devices capable of measuring different parts of our health, especially heart or respiratory rates, are becoming increasingly po[CENSORED]r. All with specialized sensors to make a metric as accurate as possible. Google wants to make everything easier with Google Fit, its health application.

Google will add a function to its application that will allow us to perform heart and respiratory rate measurements using our smartphone's camera, as we can read on Engadget. Measurements nowhere near as precise as would be achieved using a specialized device, but sufficient to make the odd estimate.

The features will be released in the app in a month and unsurprisingly, they will first launch for Google's proprietary phones, the Google Pixels, in which case the update will take a few weeks.       

This update has a clear purpose: to obtain approximate measurements without needing a device that has the necessary sensors, such as a smartwatch or a wearable. However, this has a trade-off; We cannot use these measurements as concise medical data, but as mere features intended for day-to-day health and well-being.

The operation is simple. The application uses the smartphone camera, several of its sensors and Google's famous artificial intelligence. The camera collects the data it needs, an algorithm processes it and gives us an approximate measurement. To measure heart rate, the camera will have to focus on our fingertip, detecting beats.

The camera collects the heartbeat and with the optical color of the blood, the application can recognize changes in its volume. If, on the other hand, we want to perform a respiratory measurement, the front camera will have to focus on our head and chest, and the rise and fall of our chest due to breathing will be recorded to perform the metric.

Both systems have room for error and, we repeat, the resulting measurements should be considered as well-being data and not medical data. The cardiac measurement system has a margin of error, according to Google, of 2% and that of respiration of one breath per minute. To this is added the human factor, which can increase the margin of error.

If, on the other hand, we want a much more thorough measurement or, failing that, more precise, we will have to continue to resort to wearables and smartwatches that have the specific sensors for it.