Huawei’s next heart rate module to track glucose, lung function & more

Huawei has held a media presentation showcasing the future of its smartwatches and fitness trackers. It turns out, the next step in its wearable development may be glucose, lung function tracking and high altitude health management.

TruSeen is Huawei’s proprietary heart rate monitoring technology. It uses a number of sensors and works in tandem with the company’s neural network AI technology.

Essential reading: Top fitness trackers and health gadgets

Now on its fifth generation, the TruSeen heart rate module consists of eight photodiodes arranged in a circular layout with two sets of light source. Version 5.0 is said to significantly reduce external interference and the upgraded algorithm allows for accurate heart rate measurements even during strenous exercise. The company has also managed to improve blood oxygen measurement accuracy.

Some innovative technology is in the works

Huawei held a sports and health media communication meeting a couple of days ago. At the gathering, the Chief Operating Officer of Huawei Terminal BG provided some insight into where this technology is heading next. As per the presentation, it seems the next frontier in Huawei health tracking will be blood sugar, lung function tracking, along with high altitude health management.

“So far, HUAWEI TruSeenTM has been self-developed technology stemming from more than 7 years of research. It integrates the innovative technology and R&D strength of Huawei Sports Health Science Laboratory and Huawei Global Research Institute.” He Gang said (translation to English).

“From 1.0 to 5.0+, the company has achieved technological innovation in hardware, algorithm and process design, as well as heart rate accuracy. In the future, our hardware software and services will continue to improve. In addition to the continuous enhancement of basic detection capabilities such as heart rate, blood oxygen and blood pressure, Huawei will bring more comprehensive and intelligent health management to our users in the new research field of blood sugar, lung function and plateau health management…”

Glucose monitoring is pretty self-explanatory. So far there has been no solution which is able to track this non-invasively. However, there are some technologies in development which will hopefully change this soon.

Huawei is working on their proprietary solution jointly with professional medical institutions. The goal is to develope hyperglycemic risk screening, glucose level trend assesment and an early warning system flagging up potential issues.

According to IT Home, the lung function health assesment combines info from heart rate, blood oxygen, breathing and more. It allows for chronic obstructive pulmonary screening to predict a person’s risk of developing the condition in advance.

The altitude health management function is another interesting feature that combines info from a number of different sensors. As we all know, high altitude environments are challenging. The body changes and behaves differently as it tries to adapt to the altered oxygen level. Precautions, therefore, need to be taken to avoid serious mountaineering illnesses. The growing trend of adventure travel makes this potential new feature all the more important.

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