Jul 26, 2011

Check Your Heart Rate with Your iPhone...Seriously

OK, that sound's crazy, doesn't it?  Can your iPhone tell your heart rate, your pulse?  How's that possible?  It turns out there is an app for that and how it does this is seriously innovative...and it doesn't need any additional hardware.

Instant Heart Rate for the iPhone, as I understand it, works sort of like a pulse oximeter, one of those things measures oxygen saturation in your blood, which changes as your heart beats.  To measure your heart rate, you put your finger tip on the camera.  The app turns on the flash while monitoring color changes in your finger through the camera lens. It's quite ingenious.

Is it accurate? The people at Azumio, the app developer, say it is "the most accurate heart rate monitor app for iPhone". My informal tests seemed to give results consistent with what I would get at the doctor's office, as long as I placed my finger on it correctly and kept my finger still.  To get a better idea of how it works, check out the video below.

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