We all are now familiar with blood oxygen sensor or pulse oximeter, a medical-equipment that many people are now having it on their home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The equipment is helpful in knowing the oxygen saturation percentage on your body. Decreased Spo2 might be an indication of a person infected with COVID.
Also, a COVID patient requires being checked their Spo2 level on regular basis to know about current position.
If you don’t have this tool for some reason, you can turn your SmatPhone into a blood oxygen sensor. We will explain you in detailed how as we go in this article.
There are several blood oxygen apps available for download on Android and iOS devices. These apps do not require any extra accessories or wearables to functions.
To detect Spo2 level on your body, they use the camera hardware of the SmartPhone. This technique is known as photoplethysmography (PPG) where the users require completely cover the camera lens and flashlight with their finger.
The apps will then turn the flash on and use the camera to calculate the oxygen rate with the help of reflected light.
We have seen various apps using cameras to calculate heartbeats. Some Samsung Galaxy devices have this feature. Now, we are seeing camera-powered blood oxygen sensor apps on various app stores.
Some examples of Blood Pulse Oximeter Apps for Android and iOS
Blood Oxygen App
This app is helpful in knowing oxygen saturation as well as your heart rate. It carries a simple UI and so you can easily use it even when you are using it for the first time.
Talking about review, the app receives overall rating of 4.6 from 7, 000 ratings on App Store. It is free to use and is free of ads. It is available for Android, iPhone and Apple Watch.
CarePlix Vitals
The Kolkata-based app can be used to measure Spo2 level in blood, heartbeats and respiration rate. As per developers, advanced AI algorithms are stuffed in the app that improves its detection accuracy.
At current, the app does not charge any amount from you for oxygen saturation detection. However, it works only when you create a free user account and does not provide Facebook and Google SSO buttons. During the release, it was available for both Android and iOS, but now it has been pulled from Google Play.
Pulse Monitor – Beat & Oxygen
This is another oxygen monitor app that detects Spo2 level and heart beat. It saves all collected data in a digital diary and thus you can keep track the oxygen level over time.
The limitation of the app is that it works in a limited number of devices with build-in sensor, including Galaxy Note4/Edge/5/7/8/9, Galaxy S6/7/8/9/10, and their plus variants. It is available for Android 5.0 and later versions.
Apple Health app
Apple has inbuilt Apple Health app as blood oxygen saturation tracker. In this app, under the browse> Respiratory> Blood oxygen> Add Data, you can add various data like oximeter reading, date and time. Also, the app provides you graphical view to analyze your health.
Pulse Oximeter
This pulse oximeter monitoring app is available for Android versions 4.3 and later. The app only tracks your Spo2 level and heart beat after measuring them through oximeter.
You will have option in this app to add blood saturation data along with the date and time. Overtime, you can see the trend of the blood oxygen levels and heartbeat fluctuation.
This is how you can monitor blood oxygen rate using SmartPhone. Still, we recommend you using pulse oximter devices for the purpose.
