Apple Watch Blood Glucose Monitoring Likely Delayed

To my disappointment, I read this MacRumors post this morning.

“Apple is also working on non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, but the feature is still believed to be several years away and the company is not yet targeting a release year. In the meanwhile, Apple has discussed improving support for third-party glucose meters on the Apple Watch and on the ‌iPhone‌’s Health app to help users with diabetes.“

This could be a game changer for people to be empowered to be their own health coach. Danica and I both own Oura Rings, and I’ve posted before how much of a eye-opener it was to see the effects of any alcohol had on my system through it’s tracking of heart rate and HRV (heart rate variability, a measurement of how much stress your body is under). It’s the single greatest reason I’ve cut down my drinking to almost nothing this year. It’s just such a self-own.

Imagine what simple, fairly cheap, and accurate non-invasive (read: not having to stick yourself with a needle) monitoring of your glucose levels would do? You’d see immediately what that tasty dish, that guilty pleasure, that sugary, carby treat does to your system. You could reflect, using that new data, how you feel when your sugar spikes. What’s the cause and effect in this retrospective? I think you’re much more able to draw conclusions and connections when you connect some hard data with something as squishy as feeling. Empowering.

This wouldn’t mean you’d never have that treat again, just like it means that I might have a whiskey every now and again. But you’d know going into it, OK, this is what it does to my body and this is how it’s probably going to make me feel. Informed decisions are the way to go here.

From a technology standpoint, tangentially related, I find it fascinating that Apple, the world’s most successful tech company and storied in its ability to execute, has had such an amazing dearth of ground breaking things for years now. So many incredibly talented engineers and designers, making so much money, and the company has gotten just really good at iterating. Now, that iteration is relentless, a master craft of refining good ideas to something nearing perfection (yeah, I’m a huge fan of Apple), but I can’t help but think they could be placing some bigger bets on breakthroughs with all the resources at their disposal. And backing this up:

“…some employees have been unhappy with Apple’s progress, arguing that enhancements are taking too long, not enough risks are being taken, and that the Health team has not grown in at least two years.”

Yup.