Philipp Helmer, Philipp Rodemers, Sebastian Hottenrott, Robert Leppich, Maja Helwich, Rüdiger Pryss, Peter Kranke, Patrick Meybohm, Bernd E. Winkler, Michael Sammeth

• Summary Blood oxygen saturation is an important clinical parameter, especially in postoperative hospitalized patients, monitored in clinical practice by arterial blood gas (ABG) and/or pulse oximetry that both are not suitable for a long-term continuous monitoring of patients during the entire hospital stay, or beyond. Technological advances developed recently for consumer-grade fitness trackers could—at least in theory—help to fill in this gap, but benchmarks on the applicability and accuracy of these technologies in hospitalized patients areSummary Blood oxygen saturation is an important clinical parameter, especially in postoperative hospitalized patients, monitored in clinical practice by arterial blood gas (ABG) and/or pulse oximetry that both are not suitable for a long-term continuous monitoring of patients during the entire hospital stay, or beyond. Technological advances developed recently for consumer-grade fitness trackers could—at least in theory—help to fill in this gap, but benchmarks on the applicability and accuracy of these technologies in hospitalized patients are currently lacking. We therefore conducted at the postanaesthesia care unit under controlled settings a prospective clinical trial with 201 patients, comparing in total >1,000 oxygen blood saturation measurements by fitness trackers of three brands with the ABG gold standard and with pulse oximetry. Our results suggest that, despite of an overall still tolerable measuring accuracy, comparatively high dropout rates severely limit the possibilities of employing fitness trackers, particularly during the immediate postoperative period of hospitalized patients. Highlights •The accuracy of O2 measurements by fitness trackers is tolerable (RMSE ≲4%) •Correlation with arterial blood gas measurements is fair to moderate (PCC = [0.46; 0.64]) •Dropout rates of fitness trackers during O2 monitoring are high (∼1/3 values missing) •Fitness trackers cannot be recommended for O2 measuring during critical monitoring…