Apple seems to be working on blood glucose monitoring for the Apple Watch, which is not a surprise given its recent focus on health. Also known as blood sugar, the test usually requires a drop of blood to be placed upon a disposable square to be analyzed by a sensor. Those diagnosed with diabetes test themselves as often as ten times each day. The information can be useful to anyone as a general measure of health, while also providing data on how the body reacts to various foods and beverages. Due to this, adding an option to the Apple Watch would significantly benefit wearers.
Being Apple’s only wearable with a screen, the wildly popular smartwatch is well-positioned to be an excellent health monitor. With the first Apple Watch, a heart rate sensor and step counter were about as far as it went, but each generation refined and extended those capabilities. The greatest advance was the addition of an ECG with the Apple Watch Series 4. Previously, such monitoring required dedicated equipment from a cardiologist and typically only accessed after signs of heart trouble had already arisen. Now Apple Watch Series 4, 5 and 6 wearers can get advance notice of possible trouble and share data with their doctors for further testing and analysis. A pulse oximeter was added in Series 6, helping to identify potential sleep apnea, as well as other issues related to blood oxygen levels.
Continuing along the built-in sensor line, a future Apple Watch model may include blood glucose monitoring. Apple filed a patent application in 2018 for optical sensors of substances at various depths. The particular substances of interest weren’t identified in the document, but the rumor was that this was to be a blood glucose scan. A recent report from the Korean IT news website, ETNews, detailed this as a potential feature of Samsung’s next Galaxy Watch 4 and noted that it would use Raman spectroscopy to analyze light scattering to identify the sugar molecule. The report also mentioned that Apple and others were working on the same technology, which seems to have advanced to the point that it may be commercialized soon.
New Apple Watch Sensors
The Apple Watch already uses colored light-emitting diodes and optical sensors for health monitoring. Its heart rate, electrocardiogram, and blood oxygen sensing solutions are all based on this technology. Since it is actually a tiny computer, and has access to the additional processing power of the iPhone when needed, it has become a very capable and accurate way to keep track of various health metrics. Given that the patent application reference to substances was very vague, it opens the door to various other tests. Blood contains a plethora of molecules, many that offer health insights, but are unknown until a blood test is analyzed. If Apple can successfully identify various molecules in the blood via the Apple Watch, this could truly be a health game-changer.
Noninvasive glucose monitoring has great value and has been pursued for several decades, but the size and cost of the technology and the time required for accurate analysis prevented this from becoming a usable solution. That may be changing soon thanks to the more powerful processors and advanced sensors found in modern smartwatches. Whether the Apple Watch Series 7 will have blood glucose testing or not is unknown, but it is certain that Apple will continue to move further into health monitoring and analysis.