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Apple continues focus on blood-sugar tracking, including noninvasive glucose monitoring

MacDailyNews

Oct 25

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The Blood Oxygen sensor on the back crystal of Apple Watch

Apple, seeking to make further inroads in health care, tested a blood sugar tracking app this year to help people with prediabetes manage their food intake and make lifestyle changes, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg News citing “people with knowledge of the matter.”

Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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The company tested the service on select employees earlier this year, part of its broader push into blood-sugar features, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is secret. Though Apple doesn’t have plans to release the app, the company may eventually integrate the technology into future health products, including a noninvasive glucose tracker that it’s been developing for more than a decade.
The employees involved in the test needed to validate that they were prediabetic with a blood test. That means they don’t currently have diabetes but may be at risk of developing the Type 2 version of the disease. As part of the test, they actively monitored their blood sugar via various devices available on the market and then logged glucose-level changes in response to food intake.
The idea behind the system is to show consumers how certain foods can affect blood sugar — with the hope of inspiring changes that could ward off diabetes. For instance, if users logged that they ate pasta for lunch and that their blood sugar spiked, they could be told to stop eating the pasta or switch to protein…
The research wasn’t directly tied to Apple’s longstanding effort to build a no-prick glucose monitor, but it could ultimately help inform how the company handles that project. The noninvasive checker is one of Apple’s most ambitious health initiatives. The idea is to analyze a person’s blood without pricking the skin — a potentially groundbreaking advance in the fight against diabetes.

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MacDailyNews Take: Too much sugar is poison.

Initially envisioned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (like everything else – MDN Ed.) CNBC in 2017 reported that Apple had assembled a team that, at the time, was already working for at least five years to develop sensors that can non-invasively and continuously monitor blood sugar levels to better treat diabetes.

If* achieved, Apple Watch would become the essential device for hundreds of millions of people with diabetes.

*It’s a big “IF,” as evidenced by the fact that Apple has been working on this for at least the last decade and a half. Non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring would indeed be the holy grail for treating diabetes (and for Apple Watch sales).

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