The “Apple Watch Series 7” may include the glucose monitoring feature for a long time, suggests a report on Samsung’s rival wearable device, despite the difficulty of measuring blood sugar without drawing blood.
Rumors have been circulating for a few years about an Apple Watch glucose monitoring feature, allowing users to check their blood sugar levels from the wearable device. According to a report, this feature could emerge in the next generation of Apple Watch.
In a report on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch potentially gaining a non-invasive blood glucose monitoring feature, ETNews claims that a similar feature will appear on “Apple Watch 7”. Referring to existing reports on the function, as well as Apple’s patent applications, the feature is undergoing “reliability and stability” tests before being marketed.
Apple has secured several patents related to monitoring blood sugar without drawing blood, including one from 2019 that analyzes body odor for changes. Another employed an optical absorption spectroscopy system to analyze materials in the blood.
Reports dating back to 2017 also state that CEO Tim Cook participated in non-intrusive glucose monitoring tests, with Cook also admitting to having used a continuous glucose monitor for a few weeks.
This feature would change the lives of Type 1 diabetics, who need to monitor their blood sugar levels using a constant glucose monitor (CGM) or finger pricks throughout the day. This would probably take many years to reach the degree of accuracy that diabetics require before self-administering insulin.
A more likely step for Apple is to try to decrease the growing number of type 2 diabetics. The Apple Watch can monitor a user’s blood glucose level and alert him if his reading is above normal and if he is pre-diabetic . The idea is that users who are more aware that they can become diabetic will take significant steps to prevent it in the first place.
Like Apple and Samsung, other companies are trying to solve the problem in their own way, although they all have the same regulatory hurdles to overcome. As with the Apple Watch ECG function, any proposed blood glucose function will need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and international counterparts before being used in each country.