Apple is working on the miniaturization of an optical blood glucose sensor to eventually integrate it into the Apple Watch. The brand has already developed a functional prototype, but still too bulky.
There are 460 million diabetics worldwide, 100 million of whom need to monitor their blood sugar carefully to adjust their dose of insulin. Testing your blood sugar without pricking yourself to draw blood is what Apple has been working on for almost five years. Its objective is to integrate into the Apple Watch a new sensor optics capable of analyzing the rate of glucose in the body. It must be said that the connected watch is enriched more and more with medical functions .
In the latest version, in addition to an accelerometer to detect road accidents and automatically notify the emergency services, there were also two thermometers. Useful to be able to detect a flare-up off ever, or detect periods of ovulation in women. But adding a blood glucose sensor no invasive and without a sting is far from easy. To achieve this, Apple has developed a miniaturized photonic chip according to the latest revelations reported by Bloomberg .
Fit the equivalent of an iPhone into the watch
The module is able to determine the concentration and structure of a substance. To achieve this, it measures the intensity of electromagnetic radiation, through wave lengths different. More concretely, the light modulated by a laser on the skin would allow to assess the concentration of glucose in the body.
This technology is not new as such. But until now, the devices in question were the size of a dining table. Apple labs would have managed to reduce it to the dimensions of an iPhone and the device would be fully operational, according to Bloomberg.
So obviously, it’s still too early for this concept to be miniaturized enough to be integrated into the next Apple Watch, but it could go quickly. In any case, it’s a success, because other digital heavyweights had ventured unsuccessfully into this challenge, as was the case of Alphabet with its contact lens which was to analyze glucose through tears.
