The Apple Watch will not have a glucose meter, at least for now

Before the Apple Watch was launched, rumors about all the sensors it was going to incorporate flooded the internet. The heart rate sensor was taken for granted, but there was also talk of a pulse oximeter (determination of oxygen in the blood), even a blood glucose sensor that did not require any type of needle.

After the fourth generation of Apple Watch already on the market, one of the most recurrent topics in terms of what new medical functions it could incorporate is precisely the determination of blood glucose. We are talking about many millions of people around the world who could benefit from a measurement system like this, but the reality is that we are still far from this happening.

Invasive blood glucose determination

Glucose (also commonly called sugar) in the blood can be determined in several ways. From typical blood tests to determine blood glucose to determination of interstitial glucose using a small patch with a tiny needle that you put on your arm for two weeks, going through the most popular form of measurement, capillary blood glucose, which consists of the classic finger prick.

In order not to get involved with medical terminology, and although they are not identical determinations, we are going to bring them all together under one common name: invasive glucose determination. Invasive because it uses invasive methods to get itIt does not matter the size of the needle, the fact is that you have to prick to be able to measure it. Right now this is the only real technique diabetics can use to check their blood sugar.

Non-invasive blood glucose determination

And of course it will not be because money has not been invested in the search for non-invasive determination methods. As we said before, we are talking about many millions of potential clients for the company that achieves it, and that means a lot of money. But for now no one has come up with a method that is reliable and has been approved by the FDA, the body that regulates medical devices in the United States and that must authorize any device for use for medical purposes.

Well, really if there was a device that was approved by the FDA, its name was GlucoWatch. It appeared in 2001 as the end of punctures for diabetics, but the reality is that it was a resounding failure and was never heard from again. Using a low voltage current he was able to measure glucose, at least in theory. Today it would never have gotten FDA approval because it failed to prove reliable glucose determinations, with many false alarms for high blood glucose, in addition to causing significant skin irritations in many of its users. It required three hours to start measuring, and it took a puncture to calibrate it.

After this fiasco, there have been many projects that have sought success, but none have succeeded at the moment. And we are not talking about small research groups, which there are also, but about companies like Google that already in 2014 They announced that they were working on contact lenses so they could measure blood glucose. Nothing else is known about that project, like so many others. On the internet you will surely find many articles that promise solutions that are about to arrive, but none of them ends up coming together. As the K'Watch Glucose, which last September closed its crowdfunding campaign with a resounding success according to its creators, and whose blog and Twitter account has remained silent since November 2017.

The last step is the FDA, and it is not for jokes

Let's think that if a company is able to find a solution to this problem, Apple would be the perfect candidate to achieve it. The amount of money invested in R&D in recent years could be perfectly justified by projects like this, all things being said. But the last stumbling block would remain, and it would not be small. The FDA should give authorization for this device to be used medically, and this should be the case when it comes to glucose determinations. We are not talking about measuring the heart rate when we run, or the calories we expend during the day. We are talking about measurements that will have consequences on people's health, because the insulin they inject depends on them, or whether they should go to the emergency room or not.

A device like this would be classified by the FDA as a Class III Medical Device because of its "high potential for risk." While Class I and II devices generally do not require a testing phase before they are marketed, Class III they must necessarily go through this testing phase before being made available to the public, and it is also necessary to publish results of clinical studies. All this is summed up in that we would be talking about months, we would say that even years from when the product is ready until it can be sold to the public with the FDA seal.

After the fiasco that occurred with the GlucoWatch, and taking into account the relevance that an Apple device like this would have, no one doubts that the FDA would look closely at every detail of it, and that would also mean that at some point the news would appear with details about this new technology under review, something that has not happened so far. The Apple Watch that we see this year, even next year, will not have a non-invasive glucose meter. I wish I had to swallow each of these almost a thousand written words, I wouldn't mind.


Follow us on Google News

A comment, leave yours

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: AB Internet Networks 2008 SL
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.

  1.   George said

    For God's sake correct in the second paragraph "appel watch"