Republished Jan. 24 with details of what the technology will mean and why it’s so hard to do.
Health monitoring is a key part of technology, from the brilliant Oura Ring to the many health and fitness features on the Apple Watch. Now, Samsung has announced that it is working on a feature many have seen as the holy grail for wearable tech: a non-invasive glucose monitor. It’s very hard to do, it seems.
Several years ago, Jeff Williams, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer told me that measuring blood glucose through the skin, without penetrating the skin, was very difficult to achieve accurately. Of course, Williams did not in any way say Apple was working on such a technology, though it’s widely believed that it is.
Currently, continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, such as gadgets from Lingo and Dexcom, require a sensor to go through the skin and this invasive technique is thought to put many off from considering measuring their glucose levels.
I’ve tried the Lingo unit and for the record, it really doesn’t hurt when it’s applied, but even so, I can see why people find it offputting. Right now, glucose monitors are mostly used by people with diabetes to help stay in a healthy range, but it’s a metric that could be beneficial much more widely, helping people understand the spikes in glucose that can happen because of activity or food intake, for instance. So, the news from Samsung could be meaningful to everyone.
In a news release, Dr Hon Pak, Samsung’s senior vice president and head of its digital health team, revealed that as part of the company’s ongoing work to reimagine healthcare, it was working on blood glucose.
“In particular, blood glucose is a big area of focus for us, and Samsung has been working to develop a sensor algorithm that predicts early signs of diabetes – along with non-invasive blood glucose monitoring technology and continuous glucose monitoring-integrated nutrition coaching,” Dr Pak said.
This is very big news. Apple is reportedly working on something similar for Apple Watch but there’s no official announcement about that. The fact that Dr Pak has announced this may indicate that the company is getting close.
In a forum about health hosted in San Jose, California, Dr Pak talked more about this development, as reported by Android Authority.
“What I’m really excited about is our team, as you may have assumed, we are working on a non-invasive optically-based continuous glucose monitor. I can’t tell you the time [of the launch], but I’m very excited about the progress we are making, and this, if we do it right, will be a game-changer.”
Though there’s no date set, my feeling is that if this announcement is being made, that it will come in the near-to-medium future, that is, this year or next, I would guess.
If so, it could beat Apple to the punch.
Dr Pak did not say where this monitor would be, though I imagine it would be in a future Galaxy Watch first, possibly coming to the Galaxy Ring after that. It’s possible it could even be a standalone device at first, if the sensor couldn’t be made small enough initially. And Dr Pak revealed that the sensor is optical, so it could perhaps nestle in with the other ones on the base of the watch.
No more details have been given, but I’ll update as soon as they are.
