The "loss of pulse detection" feature for the Pixel Watch 3 that received FDA clearance in February is now rolling out to U.S. users. Read on for more on what this feature does, how well it works (according to one early study), and how you’ll be able to enable it. If the watch detects that you no longer have a pulse—presumably due to a medical emergency—it can contact emergency services for you.
The feature has been available in several European countries since late 2024. According to a Google help page on the feature, it’s currently available in “Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”
Pixel Watch 3 $389.99 at Amazon $449.99 Save $60.00 Shop Now Shop Now $389.99 at Amazon $449.99 Save $60.00When the watch detects a “loss of pulse event” (it thinks you are wearing the watch but cannot detect a pulse with the regular heart rate sensor), the watch responds. According to documents from Google (archived here), the watch is programmed to do the following, in order:
Buzz your wrist and ask if you are OK. You can tap an “I’m OK” button to clear the alert. This phase lasts for 15 seconds.
Call 911 through the watch’s LTE connection, or through a connected phone, and play a recorded message to them (not audible to you or to bystanders). The message states that your watch detected a loss of pulse and that you are unresponsive, and it gives your approximate location.
What is (and isn’t) loss of pulse detection good for?
The loss of pulse detection feature is promising for what are sometimes called “unwitnessed” cardiac arrests, as a group of Italian healthcare professionals wrote in the journal Resuscitation. I wasn’t able to find any real-world accounts of this feature saving someone’s life, but to be fair it’s only been available for a few months.
Importantly, the loss of pulse detection process has not been tested in a variety of real-world situations that may increase the risk of false alarms, or of missing a real event. These are some of the people who might be most interested in this feature, so it’s worth noting that the feature has not been tested for people identified as high risk for sudden cardiac death, or for people who are pregnant, under 22 years of age, who have chronic pain, poor blood flow to the wrist, peripheral nerve conditions, cognitive impairment, sickle cell disease, or who have a tattoo on their wrist that may interfere with the sensor.
The sensitivity in a clinical trial was 69.3%, meaning that the feature was activated 69.3% of the time that a person had an actual loss of pulse. The other 30.7% of the time, it didn’t activate. That’s not great, but the idea seems to be that it’s a lot better than nothing.
If you do get a false positive, you’ll have a few chances to cancel the alert before it gets as far as calling emergency services. If you tap the “I’m OK” button, the watch will ask if you were doing anything innocuous that may have triggered it. Sleeping on your arm is one of the options; so is a loose fit on the watch band, or not wearing the watch at all. Google also notes that other factors like ambient light or pressure on the skin may sometimes result in false positives.
How to enable (or disable) loss of pulse detection on the Pixel Watch 3
Once the feature is available here, it will be an option when you're setting up a new watch. (So far it hasn't been announced for any Fitbit models or older Pixel watches, just the Pixel Watch 3 in both sizes.) To turn on loss of pulse detection for your Pixel Watch 3, go into the Pixel Watch app, tap Safety & Emergency, and look for Loss of Pulse Detection. There is a switch that allows you to turn the feature on or off.
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