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Apple Watch Likely to Gain Blood Pressure, Blood Glucose, and Blood Alcohol Monitoring
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Close your drink ring! You can still do it! A swift pint will be all you need.
Looking forward to the technology.
Purely based on sensor data, I can't imagine an optical sensor ever being as good as electrochemical analysis (which, alas, requires a drop of blood).
However, Apple's machine learning probably counteracts this discrepancy somewhat. That is, they can use statistics and heuristics to improve the raw sensor data to reduce the gap. (Much like a phone's camera sensors are quite weak, but improved significantly using ML, to the point where they easily rival the much larger sensors of point-and-shoot cameras.)
These features would be amazing. But like I've always said about Apple Watch, what I think is most exciting part is the future AI which will monitor all information, such as all of the biometrics, time of day, altitude, etc etc, together with the person's health record and history, and really be able to give accurate, meaningful, passive information and alerts. Rather than the almost gimmicky "Oooh, should we see what my ECG is?!" that we have now.
I think at the moment, in terms of alerting people to potential health issues that they should perhaps discuss with their doctor, it's really useful for a very small minority; so, I'm not downplaying the technology. But I have minor asthma, together with a couple of other minor conditions / ailments / concerns, and it'll be great when we get to a point where the Apple Watch has the kind of AI that can spot certain patterns, etc, and give solid information and advice to the average Joe.
I think at the moment, in terms of alerting people to potential health issues that they should perhaps discuss with their doctor, it's really useful for a very small minority; so, I'm not downplaying the technology. But I have minor asthma, together with a couple of other minor conditions / ailments / concerns, and it'll be great when we get to a point where the Apple Watch has the kind of AI that can spot certain patterns, etc, and give solid information and advice to the average Joe.
I thought that same thing, freshman year hijinks with competitions to see who can get their blood alcohol the highest in the shortest amount of time, and news stories blaming Apple.
But, if one were to have one too many bowls of loud mouth soup, they could just take their watch off to drive.
Whenever the watch can do all of this WITH accurate blood oxygen I am in! That would scream MONSTER sales success for Apple.
They’re “developing” it. Much like all the companies who have been “developing” over the air charging stations that don’t seem to ever hit the market.
Apple better be sure these non-invasive sensors are actually accurate and not just tacky add-ones thrown in because they need to sell more watches. Something like blood glucose is not a joke and if diabetics put too much trust in a watch to tell them how to manage their own bodies someone is going to get hurt. Or if someone has a few drinks and jumps behind the wheel because his watch told him he’s under the limit and he ends up killing someone.
Apple wants us to think they’re going to revolutionize health and give you your own personal physician to strap onto your wrist but they might start punching above their weight if they’re not careful.
I don't think they'll sell it as "this is a viable replacement for professional glucose measuring gear" any more than they sell their 1-lead ECG as a viable replacement for a doctor's visit with a 12-lead ECG.
This will, just like the ECG, be a relatively imprecise way to answer questions like "might I have pre-diabetes?", not a portion of a diabetic's therapy.
They don't sell it as your own personal physician.
It does collect far more data than you would realistically have otherwise, though, especially continuous data, so it can be good for trends and aberrations.
Just announced
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