Apple has been adding quite a few health features to its Apple Watch models for generations now. It has already proven its caliber with blood oxygen, heart rate, and sleep quality monitoring sensors that are performing optimally to date. Cut to now, a report coming from Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reveals yet another milestone that Apple Watch will be able to achieve in a few years’ time.
Cupertino-based tech juggernaut is developing technology to monitor blood glucose with a prick-less method that will actually revolutionize the smartwatch industry.
According to the report, Apple has hit a major breakthrough with its blood glucose monitoring technology. It won’t use a needle to prick and collect a blood sample for glucose monitoring but rather laser spectroscopy to detect blood glucose in real time.
The technology works with the help of optical absorption spectroscopy and silicon photonics, a dedicated chip technology, that shoots lasers of a prespecified wavelength on the wrist of the user. The laser hits the interstitial fluid which is known to absorb glucose. The light that reflects back to the sensor is used to measure glucose concentration in the blood where an algorithm is being worked upon to measure the blood glucose.
It remains to be seen if the technology will perform well or not but given Apple’s reputation w.r.t. Its previous FDA-approved sensors, the technology appears to be promising. Gurman added that although apple is working on the tech, the prototype is currently an iPhone’s size which means they will have to work a lot to get it to fit in upcoming Apple Watch models.
Having a non-invasive blood glucose monitoring technology embedded in Apple Watch would revolutionize the wearables industry. It is because the current technique includes pricking to draw a drop of blood and using a strip and a glucometer to measure the blood glucose. The process is expensive and generates a lot of waste in the form of used strips and pricks or lancets. Thus, a non-invasive technology would break through the current tech allowing people to get access to it without the boiling overheads.
As per an estimate by the World Health Organization (WHO), 537 million people worldwide suffer from Diabetes. The number will shoot up to 783 million globally by 2045 as the problem worsens. The global healthcare expenditure to treat diabetes exceeds $966Bn which gives a context of how big the industry is and how Apple’s upcoming tech can revolutionize it.
