Apple is taking a giant leap forward to make the next Apple Watch the blood glucose meter more than 500 million people have been waiting for. That’s how important the innovation they’ve been working on for years in Cupertino, the holy grail of any smartwatch, is. Measuring the blood sugar index would be the first step in routine checks when faced with a problem that It affects 14.8% of the Spanish population.
Diabetes affects 8% of the world’s population
Diabetes has not stopped growing. Diabetes is one of the most common diseases in the world population. One in eleven adults between the ages of 20 and 80 suffers from it.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common type, affects the vast majority of people. In turn, this disease it is one of the main causes of other causes such as blindness, kidney failure or heart attacks. In addition to the billions in public expenditure, diabetes carries comorbidities.
The population with low income, unhealthy habits and lack of pharmacological assistance is the most affected group of all. Let’s not forget that you can have a genetic factor and delay development through healthy habits, such as “regular physical activity, maintenance of normal body weight and avoidance of smoking”. But the reality is that it cannot always be predicted.
Steve Jobs didn’t get it: Apple Watch with glucometer is closer than ever
Steve Jobs dreamed of it. When they acquired RareLight, a startup focused on blood sugar monitoring technologies, Jobs already had in mind an Apple Watch that would perform this analysis non-invasively, using photonic sensors.
Current glucometers base their technology on something as simple as doing a simple puncture and taking a sample of one cubic micron. This blood is then spread on a strip and then a small electric current releases electrons and oxidizes the glucose. In a few seconds, the laser sensor makes a precise measurement and gives us the resultscomparing with reference values.
A somewhat annoying test, brief but much more invasive than the one prepared by Apple. They have been investigating this E5 for years, code name that hides a model based on silicon photonics and a measurement that is none other than optical absorption spectroscopy. Said laser beam, at a specific wavelength, pierces our skin and, through the reflected reading, measures the glucose levels concentrated in our bloodstream.
It is obvious that this project is still in development — by the hundreds of professionals of the Apple Exploratory Design Group, or XDG—, as reported by Bloomberg. In other words, this is not a project for watchOS 9, but for later. But the reality is that being able to perform this check in seconds, without waiting for a doctor, without having to go to the pharmacy, without conscious follow-up — since the application itself would take care of monitoring it — is a real dream come true . It’s a question of time.
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