Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Continuous glucose monitors provide diabetics with an invaluable data set for managing their blood sugar level.
- Right now, these wearable solutions still use a needle for access to your bloodstream.
- Samsung is working to take the needle out of the equation with a noninvasive optical solution.
Smart wearables are as useful as they are largely thanks to all the sensor data they’re able to gather. As long as we’ve got them on, they’re counting our steps, reading our pulse, measuring blood oxygen content, and plenty more. The companies that make the best wearables are always interested in pushing limits to add new sensor capabilities to their products, like how a number of them have been experimenting with for blood pressure. Today we’re learning about Samsung’s work towards achieving just such a milestone: noninvasive optical blood glucose monitoring.
People with diabetes have been testing their glucose levels for decades, and technology has been improving all along, bringing us from the days of fingerstick blood draws and test strips, to the wearable continuous glucose monitors that connect with our phones over Bluetooth. And as those testing options have become more accessible (with less exposure to needles and blood), there’s been growing interest in even non-diabetics using data about their glucose levels to make nutrition and health decisions.
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
The holy grail would be a system as accurate, compact, and noninvasive as the optical sensors we use now for pulse and blood oxygen monitoring. While no one’s cracked that nut commercially just yet, Samsung’s been working hard at it for years, and might end up being the company to do it.
At a Samsung Health forum the company hosted today in San Jose, senior vice president Hon Pak spoke briefly about the work his team has been doing to achieve this goal:
What I’m really excited about is our team, as you may have assumed, we are working on a noninvasive optically-based continuous glucose monitor. I can’t tell you the time [of the launch], but I’m very excited about the progress we are making, and this, if we do it right, will be a game-changer.
Indeed, if Samsung manages to be among the first companies making it to market with that kind of tech, it could be huge for Galaxy Watch sales. Probably its greatest competition there is from Apple, which has also been investing heavily in wearable health sensor development. Given the nature of the comments we’re hearing today, we might not want to bet on Samsung’s solution being ready in time for the Galaxy Watch 8, but we’ll be eager to see if any additional signs of progress emerge.
