Apple Has Been Working on Glucose Monitoring Technology for Diabetes For Five Years (Apr 12, 2017)
There’s a nice scoop here for CNBC, which reports that Apple has had a team working on non-invasively monitoring glucose levels for diabetics for five years or more. What’s fascinating here is that Steve Jobs apparently came up with the idea, which gels with a theory my podcast co-host Aaron Miller has that Jobs’ own illness precipitated Apple’s investment in what became the Apple Watch. Tim Cook has said in the past that he didn’t want to build diagnostic or treatment features into the Apple Watch because of the laborious and unpredictable FDA approval process, but it seems the company isn’t averse to working on health-related technology elsewhere. Diabetes has been the focus of a number of Alphabet’s Verily healthcare initiatives too, and remains one of the most widespread chronic illnesses in the world, with an estimated 9.3% of the US population suffering from it and 415 million around the world. One source says 12% of global healthcare spending goes on treating diabetes, so it’s a big target to go after for anyone investing in health tech. But creating products around all this would be a huge departure for Apple, which generally creates general-purpose technology, though there are obvious ties to the fitness features of Apple Watch and the HealthKit and ResearchKit initiatives.
via CNBC
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