Real Life Medical Tricorder! The Checkme Pro & O2Ring Pulse Oximeter

Hey everyone! So for most of us the healthcare landscape has changed quite a bit these past few months. My first aid kit has always been set up for burns and severed fingers because normally an ambulance is only a few minutes away. But these days, in a lot of places it could be a lot longer- and that’s assuming you really want to be in an emergency room at all. So a lot of us are using remote medicine and consulting with doctors online so we know if something is serious enough to need a visit right away, can wait until morning, or we just need to pick up a prescription. This means we need to be able to give our health care providers the best information we can, fortunately, I’ve been looking at some tech that might help us do that.

01:05 - Now as always- I’m an entertainer, not a health care provider so don’t go sticking a thermometer up your nose just because I said so. Today we’re talking about what different devices are available, but how and when to use them is best left to professionals. Links and citations are in the description box but in the end please follow the advice of your healthcare provider and don’t try to self-treat or self-diagnose. One of the issues that have been cropping up during the recent crises is something called silent hypoxia. As we all know your lungs oxygenate your blood when your blood doesn’t get enough oxygen normally you realize it pretty quickly because you feel like crap.

01:54 - This virus we’re dealing with is super tricky-because a lot of the time people with hypoxia don’t even realize it, the symptoms are silent. They feel ok, so by the time they make it to the hospital they are pretty far along and in a bad way. So for people who are at risk, or have other symptoms, some doctors are recommended they use something called a pulse oximeter to check their SP02 levels. Most pulse oximeters look like this, they have a little light that shines through your skin and based on how much light your blood absorbs it can see how much oxygen you have in your blood. Usually, if it goes below 94% or so, people are told to call their doctor.

02:44 - Does having ok SP02 levels mean you’re ok and have nothing to worry about? Absolutely not. It’s just a tool for your doctor to use, not you. Give them the number, let them decide if that data has value. It’s like a thermometer, but for another metric. Some doctors are recommending people have a pulse oximeter at home, some aren’t, they aren’t very expensive so I think given it’s become such a common tool I think it’s reasonable to have one in a first aid kit just in case your doctor asks.

03:19 - But again- this isn’t a metric you should interpret yourself unless told to. So I’ve been looking around at a few brands, and most of the products are pretty straightforward, but I found some that I thought was a bit better than others while still being reasonable as far as cost goes. They are from a company called Wellue, this is not a sponsored review. I just asked them for review units and they were kind enough to oblige. Now all of the products I’m looking at today have Bluetooth functionality.

03:59 - But, I checked very carefully- you do not need to use your phone to set them up, they all work completely on their own. Which is important for privacy purposes. The most secure way to use any product that shows health metrics is to just take a picture of the readout with your phone and send that over secure messenger to your healthcare provider. It’s not elegant- but it is pretty secure. Your next option is to install the app. I had to go through a lot of companies before I could find one with an acceptable app. The one for these products needs two permissions- location, which isn’t used for location it’s used to access Bluetooth Low Energy which happens to require location privileges, and local access to save files. That’s it.

04:54 - The BLE Location issue is an Android thing, not the app trying to snoop, documentation on this in the description box. Unfortunately there’s no way the app can do its job with fewer permissions than that but again you don’t need the app, just take a picture. There is also the option to set up an account, this lets you export data to your PC. Personally I don’t want anything health-related in the cloud so unless your health care provider asks for that, I don’t see a reason to set that up. Bluetooth and local storage is a reasonable balance of convenience and privacy.

05:34 - What I have here is a basic clip-on pulse oximeter, it’s the OxySmart Fingertip Pulse Oximeter. This gives us SPO2 and heart rate. Very simple to use. Just as easy as a thermometer. This is the most common kind you’ll find online. The problem with it is, if your doctor asks you to keep it on for a while, it’s a real pain trying to hold something at the same time with that hand. Sometimes they might tell you to sleep with it on and it’s just going to get pulled off by your blankets. You can use a bit of surgical tape, but it’s just clumsy.

06:15 - So the same company has something I really like instead, let me unbox it. It’s called the Wellue O2Ring. This tiny little ring does the exact same thing and more. But it’s much easier to keep on and doesn’t interfere with you doing normal things. The battery lasts for 12 hours, it can log and chart your data for sleep apnea. It has a vibration alert if your blood oxygen levels drop too low. I really like this, it’s a true wearable that actually offers some useful data other wearable watches and rings don’t. If you have a medical condition you can wear it in public and it’s not very noticeable. I downloaded their app, so let’s take a look. So now it shows up, this is my O2Ring. Tap the key on the top of the device, the connection will be successful in a few seconds. Okay. It’s very responsive, right away. Alright, it shows week, month and year. So it stores your data and then you can track by week, month or year.

07:53 - To monitor SPO2 and HR, please keep your device stays in range of your phone and your phone awake. Now my SPO2 is 99% and my hear rate is 86, okay. Settings, reminder so you can set when the SPO2 which 88% it will alert you. I told you that there is a vibration alert inside. Let me see. Device vibration intensity is medium. Okay, scroll down. Online backup. Sign in. So you can just sign in or not because once you connect to it, it’s just Bluetooth.

08:44 - If you want to sign in with an account, you can but I am not going to do that.You can You can see on the ring and on the app, straightforward. But remember you don’t need to use the phone, you can just use the ring, totally offline. Okay now let’s take a look at the other product. Now, what I’ve really been waiting to show you- the Checkme Pro Doctor Vital Signs Monitor. It’s pretty much the closest thing to a medical tricorder out there. It walks you through the whole process like a sci-fi auto-doc. It just makes sense that the more data we can give healthcare professionals who are working remotely, the more effectively they can treat us and this device offers pretty much everything you can get outside of a clinical setting in a pocket-size, easy to use package. Now I don’t know what every single one to these metrics means, but let’s walk through this and see if it’s at least easy for me to use, so a health care provider who does know what those metrics mean can get them from me. Okay let’s try the ECG recorder first. Okay it says I have regular ECG rhythm. Now let’s try the pulse oximeter. Insert finger in the sensor and relax. Normal blood oxygen. You see it shows SPO2 96% which is normal.

11:26 - PR, PI, I don’t know what they mean but it seems fine, because it says normal. Now let’s try the thermometer. Keep sensor lens and port clean, periodically clean with alcohol swab. Okay. Put sensor on temple, click button then scan across forehead to the other temple until a beep. 36.5 degree, celcius. Okay, looks like I am all good. This video is made possible by the generous support of JLCPCB, China’s largest PCB manufacturer. With JLC you can have your PCB manufacturered in under 24 hours, all while you track the process in real time.

12:18 - Prototype board starts at just $2 dollars in any color. Check the description box for more info. One of the best ways to support me is to support the companies that fund this channel. Okay, I was reading the instruction and I’ve got it all figured out. Now let me show you how the blood pressure cuff works. So you just press the on and off button and click NIBP on the device. It will search the blood pressure cuff and it will show up then you just connect it. You don’t have to connect to your app. Start. Please relief valve to deflate the cuff. Okay it is 99 over 61, normal range blood pressure. Next I am going to do ECG and pulse oximeter at the same time in the minimonitor mode. First, I am going to put the device in this silicon case. Okay now the checkme pro is showing my heart rate and SPO2 level.

15:35 - If you want you can actually use their app to monitor this, Let me show you. So their app is called MyBeats Air. It will search the device nearby, checkme 2915. And it is showing the same thing exactly on the Checkme Pro. It is showing the ECG number and SPO2 97. It seems fine, it seems normal. The Checkme Pro has around 10-12 hours of the built-in memory. You can log in the vitals and all day while you are sleeping or when you are sick and then the next day you can export the data to the PC and then you will see a fancy graphics of all the data in details.

16:21 - But I think for ordinary people you can just take a picture on the app or record a video and then send it to your doctors. That’s much easier. Okay now the Checkme is FDA approved, so it’s not some super dodgy gimmick. It’s well made and easy to use. At about $500 it’s not cheap, but if you have access to remote healthcare it could easily save a life or at the very least save a trip to the hospital. As far as target market my grandmother is in her late 60s and I don’t think this would be too easy for her to use. My mom and dad are in their 40s and while very healthy, they could easily use this for emergencies so I’m going to give it to them.

17:09 - At the very least, I think a pulse oximeter is a good addition to every first aid kit. But again, to emphasize- these are tools to give your doctor more information, not tools so that you can self-diagnose. Be smart, be scientific- and until next time, remember if I can do it, anyone can do it! .