According to an ETNews report, the Apple Watch Series 7 due later this year will feature blood glucose monitoring via an optical sensor.
Hartley Charlton for MacRumors:
Measuring blood glucose levels, also known as blood sugar levels, is vital to managing conditions such as diabetes. Normally, measuring blood glucose requires testing a drop of blood in a blood sugar meter or using an implanted continuous glucose monitor (CGM). The ability to observe any major increases or decreases in blood glucose may raise awareness of a potential health condition or simply help to improve a user’s diet.
Apple is said to have secured patents around blood glucose monitoring, and the company is now purportedly “focusing on securing reliability and stability prior to commercialization of the technology.” The Apple-designed optical sensor is believed to be a skin-top continuous monitoring solution that does not require an implant.
The company reportedly established a team of biomedical engineers and consultants specifically working on sensors for non-invasively monitoring blood sugar levels in 2017, and work on the sensor reportedly progressed to trials at clinical sites in the San Francisco Bay Area.
MacDailyNews Take: In fact, as reminded by MacDailyNews reader Wesley Eagon, Appel has been working on non-invasive blood glucose monitor for many years now: “Walt Mossberg says he talked with Steve Jobs about a non-invasive blood glucose monitor before he died [in October 2011]. Jobs said he ‘put a small group of people on it.'”
Eagon was quoting the “Ctrl-Walt-Delete” podcast, Episode 75 at 37:35-39:00:
If achieved, Apple Watch would become the essential device for hundreds of millions of people with diabetes.
If you think Apple Watch is getting big now, you haven’t seen an Apple Watch with non-invasive blood glucose monitoring.
Apple price targets will need to be adjusted upward again.
According to the International Diabetes Federation:
Non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring would indeed be the holy grail for treating diabetes.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader Wesley Eagon for the heads up.]