Health monitoring is a key part of technology, from the brilliant Oura Ring to the many health and fitness features on the Apple Watch. Now, Samsung has announced that it is working on a feature many have seen as the holy grail for wearable tech: a non-invasive glucose monitor.
Samsung Galaxy Watch6—will a future watch offer glucose monitoring?
In a news release, Dr Hon Pak, Samsung’s Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Health Team, revealed that as part of the company’s ongoing work to reimagine healthcare, it was working on blood glucose.
“In particular, blood glucose is a big area of focus for us, and Samsung has been working to develop a sensor algorithm that predicts early signs of diabetes – along with non-invasive blood glucose monitoring technology and continuous glucose monitoring-integrated nutrition coaching,” Dr Pak said.
This is very big news. It’s believed that Apple is working on something similar for Apple Watch but there’s no official announcement about that. The fact that Dr Pak has announced this may indicate that the company is getting close.
In a forum about health hosted in San Jose, California, Dr Pak talked more about this development, as reported by Android Authority.
“What I’m really excited about is our team, as you may have assumed, we are working on a non-invasive 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.”
Though there’s no date set, my feeling is that if this announcement is being made, that it will come in the near-to-medium future, that is, this year or next, I would guess.
If so, it could beat Apple to the punch.
Dr Pak did not say where this monitor would be, though I imagine it would be in a future Galaxy Watch first, possibly coming to the Galaxy Ring after that. It’s possible it could even be a standalone device at first, if the sensor couldn’t be made small enough initially. And Dr Pak revealed that the sensor is optical, so it could perhaps nestle in with the other ones on the base of the watch.
No more details have been given, but I’ll update as soon as they are.
