Apple is looking for technology that would allow it to monitor glucose without the need for finger pricks. He’s moving fast, but he’s not quite there yet.
Apple is going all-in on health monitoring and wants its Apple Watches to be able to monitorblood glucose without a drop of blood.
Bloomberg ‘s sources say the company’s no-tap monitoring is now in a “proof-of-concept stage” and is good enough that it can hit the market once it’s smaller.
This is how the investigation goes
In order to perform this feat, Apple wants to use lasers to measure the concentration of glucose under the skin.
Such technology has advanced so far that it has gone from the size of a table to the size of an iPhone . However, if it wants to be used in a smartwatch, it still has to shrink further.
The system would not only help people with diabetes monitor their conditions, but ideally alert people who are pre-diabetic, experts say. This would allow people to make dietary changes to prevent type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes.
A search of years
The project has supposedly been in development for a long time. It started in 2010, when an ailing Steve Jobs had his company buy the blood glucose monitoring company RareLight. Apple is said to have kept the effort under wraps by operating it as a seemingly isolated company.
But this is limited progress. In 2018, Alphabet’s health subsidiary Verily scrapped plans for a smart contact lens that would have tracked glucose using tears. Other companies consider that even with so many resources there is no guarantee of being able to achieve success in these plans.
The Apple Watch wants to continue to distinguish itself from the increasingly large competitors in the market. At the moment, you can already detect signs of atrial fibrillation, low blood oxygen levels, and even ovulation cycles.