This is a good summary of why it is so hard to make a wrist-watch device to monitor glucose (without the little needles of the current commercial, accurate, continuous monitoring devices.) I remember people talking about optical and IR detection in the 1990's, and it was an old problem even then. Non-invasive glucose monitoring is a great example of a problem that can be explained to nearly anyone (so relatively simple), but a practical solution is very hard. Maybe mid-ir (8-12 um) technology will improve to the point that it makes sense in a consumer device. That will open up a lot of other possibilities in chemical detection, too.
Not mentioned is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens, another technology failure that sounded great at first (the glucose level of tears is unfortunately poorly correlated with blood.)
I cannot begin to tell you all how much of a difference it would make to people with either type of diabetes to have a non-disposable device to monitor blood glucose. CGMs are great, I use a Libre, but it's $$$ every other week, and sometimes the damn things just break when you're putting them on.
Definitely agreed. I'm rooting for Apple, Samsung, Oura, etc to finally crack this problem and some of the techniques in the article (MIR, Raman spectroscopy, wearable foundation models) seem like they're leading in the right direction.
This is a good summary of why it is so hard to make a wrist-watch device to monitor glucose (without the little needles of the current commercial, accurate, continuous monitoring devices.) I remember people talking about optical and IR detection in the 1990's, and it was an old problem even then. Non-invasive glucose monitoring is a great example of a problem that can be explained to nearly anyone (so relatively simple), but a practical solution is very hard. Maybe mid-ir (8-12 um) technology will improve to the point that it makes sense in a consumer device. That will open up a lot of other possibilities in chemical detection, too.
Not mentioned is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens, another technology failure that sounded great at first (the glucose level of tears is unfortunately poorly correlated with blood.)
I cannot begin to tell you all how much of a difference it would make to people with either type of diabetes to have a non-disposable device to monitor blood glucose. CGMs are great, I use a Libre, but it's $$$ every other week, and sometimes the damn things just break when you're putting them on.
Definitely agreed. I'm rooting for Apple, Samsung, Oura, etc to finally crack this problem and some of the techniques in the article (MIR, Raman spectroscopy, wearable foundation models) seem like they're leading in the right direction.
I thought I read that there are actually other things going on with blood sugar, not just glucose, but maybe fructose? Wonder if this can be measured.