Patents literally are a government granted time-limited monopoly. There are a number of reasons why the government grants these monopolies. Perhaps, the ethics of medical patents should be debated, but if we collectively don’t grant patents on vital medical technologies, then I think it is unlikely that corporations are going to invest billions developing and testing life saving drugs. (Another debate: are private corporations the best stewards of developing this technology.)

For now, this is the system we’ve engineered ourselves into a corner with.

I don’t really care about some blood oxygen monitor in a smart watch, but inadvertently destroying the pharmaceutical industry over it probably ought to be carefully considered.

There’s isn’t the only way and apple could have purchased the license to use it but opted to rip off mosimo instead. Notice that samsung and many other watch manufacturers with pulse ox aren’t affected by this. Only Apple.

I’ve checked my samsung watch against actual medical pulse ox monitors I have access to and they’re within 1% of each other in heart rate (within a couple bpm, at least) and oxygen saturation do they seem as accurate.

Also, Apple does not claim to be a medical device. Neither does samsung. They aren’t opening themselves up to all the liability and extra hoops for that, so no one should be medically relying on them, even if they do appear to be working as such.

I think you just answered the question why monopolists are working so hard at preventing that.

There are other options on the market from what I understand, Apple just really liked how one company did it. Not enough to just license it like a normal company though, they opted to gut the company that made it.

The blood oxygen sensor on the watch is a novelty and is not a medical device. It’s not accurate enough to provide any actual medical help.