There is an app I play with on the iPad from Philips that tells you what your heart rate is bases on color changes in your face. Nice technology… it will be better when iPads are mounted on the wall, for now holding my iPad still after a run isn’t always easy.

For the iPhone (works on the iPad2 also if in a very well lit area), an app released Azumio called Instant Heart Rate, reports on your heart rate via the camera looking at your finger. The ‘flash’ LED on the iPhone helps the recording be more successful by lighting the internals of the finger. Just launch Instant Heart Rate, place your finger over the camera and 10 seconds later your have your heart rate.

I found that when I rested my hand on something solid, the software was able to get a clean read faster. Once Instant Heart Rate sees your heart pulse through your finger, the text tells you that it is starting it’s 8 second countdown. Until that successful connection, you get a message that the app is attempting to find your finger. When done, your rate is shown against a colored line graphic to show you have your rate compares against a expected normal rate.

If you would like, you can have Instant Heart Rate save your recordings for later reference. The app makes every attempt it can to have you set up an account with the creator’s service to have your history saved on their servers. I’m not sure why I’m resistant but for now I’m not opening up my health recording to a company I don’t know much about but has a cool iPhone app. Your free to use the service or not, it doesn’t change the effectiveness of the app.

If you use a running app and tell your friends on Facebook or Twitter about your runs. Instant Heart Rate lets you post up your heart rate for others to see too. Would you post normal or the times that your rate is very high? I can see this technology being very handy for anyone who sometimes wonder if their heart is pounding and want to see if it really is being excessive.