Smartwatches that can measure blood sugar have been discussed for years. However, there is still no device on the market that has this capability. We explain what obstacles there are.
- Smartwatches that can measure blood sugar have been in development for years – so far there is no market-ready solution.
- The corresponding sensors are currently either too large or too expensive to be installed in a mass-market smartwatch.
- The hope currently lies in artificial intelligence, which could detect low blood sugar levels using smartwatch data.
Around 11 million people in Germany suffer from type 1 or type 2 diabetes, and around 550 million people around the world. Anyone who falls ill has so far had to rely on invasive methods for measuring blood sugar – those that penetrate the skin and measure the blood sugar level either directly from the blood or from the fatty tissue.
For years there has been hope that blood sugar could be measured non-invasively – for example using a smartwatch. But so far there is no mature, mass-market solution on the market – even though research into the matter has been going on for years. What is that actually about?
Why measuring blood sugar with smartwatches is difficult
The so-called non-invasive glucose measurement has so far been based on two approaches: measurement via tear fluid and using spectroscopy. The former approach is probably self-explanatory and not practical for a smartwatch. Google stopped working on the development of blood glucose-measuring contact lenses a few years ago.
Measurement using spectroscopy, on the other hand, seems more promising – especially because the technology is already used to measure pulses in millions of smartwatches.
During spectroscopy, light is irradiated into tissue. Certain metrics can be recorded based on how quickly and to what extent the light is reflected. The problem with measuring blood sugar using spectroscopy: The signal that has to be measured is very small – because glucose usually only contains around 100 milligrams per deciliter of blood. This results in overlapping signals, making precise measurement very difficult.
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