Apple has been working on a challenging product behind closed doors for a while now. Development began a long time ago in 2010, beginning with the acquisition of a company called RareLight. It’s highly experimental, but it can change Blood Glucose monitoring worldwide if it’s successful. For those suffering from diabetes, a tool for monitoring blood sugar levels is a must. For others, it’s useful to track sugar intake in your diet.
Apple made headlines in 2023 for achieving some breakthroughs in this technology. Completely non-invasive blood glucose is difficult to achieve since it doesn’t involve any Glucose Metre strips. Apple is also working on making it continuous, and you currently need a continuous glucose monitor for that, but it’s still invasive.
Apple is attempting to try it with Silicon Photonics and laser emissions, which will give a rough estimation of blood sugar level indication using some algorithms. The size is still not small enough to fit into an Apple Watch. Prototypes are currently as large as smartphones. However, it’s not just Apple working on this.
Samsung is apparently working on non-invasive glucose monitoring for its wearables, too. This will put it right against Apple’s implementation of the same thing. A company executive confirmed that Samsung is developing this technology while also trying to improve the accuracy of blood pressure tracking. While the Galaxy Ring could get better Blood Pressure tracking, it’s a nearly impossible feat for the Ring to get non-invasive blood sugar monitoring.
According to Samsung’s Chief Medical Officer, Hon Pak, Samsung is also working on continuous monitoring, according to an interview on Bloomberg. That’s the end goal for all companies working on this project. The project is supposedly very challenging and is years away from making it a consumer product. The executive does not provide a timeline for the release during this interview. Samsung is also pouring significant investments into this project.
If Samsung succeeds in the development before Apple, the company might beat Apple to it despite Apple starting research more than a decade ago. We definitely will not see Samsung add this to the Galaxy Watch 6. We can expect some time in the next five years- the exact rough estimate for Apple.