Essay On Fitbit

In a country where cardiovascular disease consistently dominates as the top cause of death, consumers frequently look to wearable fitness trackers such as the Fitbit to help manage their wellness. Fitbit, one of the leading companies in the fast-growing healthy lifestyle market, sold 21.3 million devices in 2015 alone and has a market capitalization of about $3 billion. Users believe these devices to help them lose weight and maintain their fitness, but recent studies have proven that Fitbit may not be as accurate or helpful as their company wants consumers to think. Though Fitbit claims that they are “dedicated to developing the most accurate activity trackers on the market”, research from multiple universities and various news sources begs to differ. Fitbit devices that track heart rate use the company’s patented PurePulse technology. This technology is an offshoot of photoplethysmography, a means of measuring heart rate using light. As one’s heart beats, the volume of the blood at any given location in the body fluctuates. Photoplethysmography uses green light, the wavelength absorbed by blood, to record heart rate. While the volume of blood fluctuates, so will the absorption of green light emitted by the Fitbit device. The Fitbit uses photodiode light receptors to measure the amount of light absorbed by the blood. …show more content…
Lead researcher Lisa Cadmus-Bertram compared the Fitbit Charge, Fitbit Surge, and two devices from another company, Mio, against the readings of an ECG. The Fitbit devices were only off by an average of about 5 beats per minute compared to the ECG readings while their users were in a resting state. During increased activity, however, the error of the Fitbit readings jumped to an average error of 20 to 40 beats per minute. The conclusion that these devices are significantly more accurate during rest than during physical activity has been supported by previous studies as