Why do we not have a generally accepted highly accurate optical heart rate sensor for clinical and research applications?

Last Updated on January 23, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

The first optical heart rate monitors we used where MIO devices. Then the Garmin Forerunner 235. These had three green sensor lights. After that, we used the Polar OH1 with 6 green sensor lights. Then surprisingly, the Polar Verity came, but not with a higher accuracy, but with a longer battery life than the Polar OH1. The high accuracy of the Polar OH1 could partly be explained by the fact, that it is a non-wrist based sensor. But then another surprise. Rob ter Horst claims that Apple watches are more accurate than the non-wrist based sensors Polar OH1 and Verity Sense. Did Polar intergrate HeartPy to increase the running time of the Verity Sense? And did Apple integrate HeartPy to increase the accuracy of their watches, as well as by adding more sensors? And can Peter Charlton, Paul van Gent and Talha Iqbal and we not compete with sports sensor device manufacturers as far as new products and papers are concerned, since sports sensor manufacturers invested in the development of those, but not universities? Whe have finger PPG devices, but they are not very accurate. We do not know of any studies which compared those the optical sports sensors, but they are as far as we know much less accurate than the most accurate optical sports heart rate sensors.