Apple appears to be calmly moving forward on its grand plan to create noninvasive blood sugar monitoring technology for people with diabetes.
It is of course the journalist of Bloomberg Mark Gurman who brings us the latest news about this project says « moonshot » intended for Apple Watch. A project so difficult to develop that it is compared to a rocket launch in the direction of the Moon. Technology is advancing and Apple would start designing a prototype.
Prevent the risk of diabetes
In 2021, diabetes affected some 537 million people worldwide (including 4.5 million in France) and could affect one in ten adults by 2045 according to the International Diabetes Federation. This disease is a major issue in the world of health. It also extends to the connected health segment, which is increasingly present on a daily basis through bracelets and connected watches which multiply the possibilities of monitoring our state of health. It is therefore a gigantic market that Apple wishes to develop further with its solution.
Since 2010, Apple has therefore been developing its own blood glucose monitoring technology, without having to take the person’s blood directly or put a patch on them. The main objective of the company, according to information from Gurman, obtained from sources close to the matter, is indeed to prevent the risk of diabetes. Watches do not replace doctors, Apple would position itself on prevention, upstream. Users would be warned in advance if they are at risk and could therefore adapt their lifestyle accordingly in order to avoid going on to type 2 diabetes.
Here’s how the technology would work. The system built into the Apple Watch will use a laser that emits light at certain specific wavelengths, directly to areas of interstitial fluid (the fluid that travels between body cells). It is a liquid that can be absorbed by glucose and it is therefore in these areas that it is easier to spot the sugar level. The light is then returned to the device which takes care of processing the information and broadcasting it to the person.
Twelve years of work
Mark Gurman reveals that Apple has been working on this technology since 2010. The company is therefore entering its thirteenth year of development and has reached the stage of proof-of-concept. The giant therefore thinks that its technology is viable and that it can work. We must now move on to the miniaturization stage in order to integrate it into the Apple Watch. This step would take several more years. Apple is currently thinking of a first prototype the size of an iPhone to attach to the biceps.
Today, the project occupies a few hundred engineers from the Apple Exploratory Design Group (XDG). According to Gurman’s sources, there are even fewer people working on this project than employees developing the top-secret Apple Car or the brand’s mixed reality headset.
Unusual information, for years, Apple has in fact operated under the identity of a fake startup to develop its technology in the greatest secrecy. The company was called Avalonte Health LLC and had its own premises a few miles from Apple’s offices in California. The employees even had badges with the name of this fake company. Thus, Apple was able to conduct its hundreds of tests on humans in complete secrecy.
