Apple Watch Likely to Gain Blood Pressure, Blood Glucose, and Blood Alcohol Monitoring 53
The Apple Watch may gain the ability to measure blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood alcohol levels, according to newly-revealed information about one of Apple's chosen business partners. MacRumors reports: Apple has been revealed to be the largest customer of the British electronics start-up Rockley Photonics, The Telegraph reports. Rockley Photonics has developed non-invasive optical sensors for detecting multiple blood-related health metrics, including blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood alcohol levels, many of which are only normally detectable with more invasive dedicated medical equipment. Rockley's sensors beam infrared light through a user's skin, much like the existing sensors on the back of the Apple Watch for detecting heart rate and blood oxygen levels.
Rockley's disclosure that its biggest client is Apple came about as the company prepares to go public in New York. The company's filings said that Apple accounted for the majority of its revenue over the last two years and that it has an ongoing "supply and development agreement" with the company, under which it expects to continue to heavily rely on Apple for most of its revenue. Given the growth of Rockley Photonics and the scale of Apple's partnership with the company, it seems to be virtually inevitable that the company's health sensor technology will be coming to the Apple Watch sooner rather than later.
Rockley's disclosure that its biggest client is Apple came about as the company prepares to go public in New York. The company's filings said that Apple accounted for the majority of its revenue over the last two years and that it has an ongoing "supply and development agreement" with the company, under which it expects to continue to heavily rely on Apple for most of its revenue. Given the growth of Rockley Photonics and the scale of Apple's partnership with the company, it seems to be virtually inevitable that the company's health sensor technology will be coming to the Apple Watch sooner rather than later.
How does the blood pressure monitor work? (Score:1)
Pressure cuffs are typical for upper arm blood pressure monitors. How does that work in a watch?
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Ultrasound.
Re:How does the blood pressure monitor work? (Score:4, Funny)
Theranos
FTFY
Re:How does the blood pressure monitor work? (Score:5, Informative)
Ultrasound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjEPz9xqlI0
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That's very nifty. Thanks for the link.
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That actually shows that they couldn't make it to work. [youtu.be]
As for Apple... Everything mentioned in the summary and in the article is barely a rumor. [misterbg.org]
It's all based on the fact that Apple is buying something from them.
I.e. It's literally based on the "An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology that could conceivably become part of an expensive, digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy." stage of the Apple Product Cycle.
For all we k
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The British company [Rockley Photonics] has developed ultra-accurate sensors that read multiple blood signals that are typically only detectable using medical equipment, by beaming infrared light through skin from a module on the back of a smartwatch. Rockley, which has offices in Oxford, Wales and Silicon Valley, revealed its relationship with Apple in listing documents as it prepares to go public in New York. The filings said that Apple accounted for the majority of its revenue in the last two years and that it has an ongoing “supply and development agreement” with the company under which it expects to continue to rely on Apple for most of its income. Its revenue largely comes from engineering fees paid to the company for work on future products. Andrew Rickman, Rockley’s chief executive, said that he expected the company’s technology to be in consumer products next year, although he declined to confirm if this would be an Apple device Rockley Photonics is going public at an expected valuation of around $1.2bn through a “SPAC” merger with SC Health, an investment vehicle listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
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It can be done reliably with ultrasound. Also, I am sure they know that hospitals are not going to sit back while their waiting rooms fill up with fools with Apple Watches. I wouldn't expect insurance companies to be happy with it either.
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Pressure cuffs are typical for upper arm blood pressure monitors. How does that work in a watch?
Possibly pulse transit time. They can measure heart rate electrically when you touch the watch with the other hand, and measure it optically in your wrist. The time taken for the pulse to reach your wrist correlates with blood pressure.
Problem is, while it correlates well it is not well calibrated and you usually need a cuff measurement in order to calibrate it.
Non-cuff BP measurement is hard (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the 1980s when ultrasonic measurement technology was moving out of labs and fixed installations and into portable devices - where portable = size of a large suitcase - I knew several people involved in projects to create non-cuffed blood pressure measurement systems using ultrasonic and similar technology. None of them worked. It is a very hard problem because unlike a rigid pipe where wall thickness is known in a blood vessel wall thickness, pressure, and flow are all functions of each other - and generally vary non-linearly exactly when you most want to measure them. I've been tracking developments in this field for a long time and I truly hope that this time there has been a breakthrough. Some developments in eyeball thickness and pressure measurement have looked promising so I've got my fingers crossed the inventors and Apple have it figured out for the general BP case. But I'm prepared for disappointment.
No known technology exists for the last two. (Score:4, Interesting)
Itâ(TM)s probably highly unlikely for Apple to provide optical blood glucose and blood alcohol monitoring, since neither technology actually exists.
If they do provide those two features in a watch, then not only will they have succeeded in being first to market, but also created the most important technology of the decade. Maybe two decades.
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Very much agreed - the glucose testing/monitoring industry is pretty big, and the state of the art is still quite invasive, so an optical system would be a very, very big deal.
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I heard they've been working with top medical minds like Elizabeth Holmes on this. Better believe it!
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I genuinely hope that they really have created such a tech, for it would be truly life changing for so many people; even for myself who has a diabetic furkid.
Fingers crossed it's not just VC/PR BS talk.
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I genuinely hope that they really have created such a tech
I genuinely hope they haven't. Apple aren't known for opening such developments to a wider industry, and I'd prefer not to have my iWristband connected to some other iToy linked to an iAccount just to make a singular function work. Rather I hope it's more like Apple's SpO2 measurement in the iWatch, something they implemented well but not at all unique to their products and available in a multitude of different devices.
Re:No known technology exists for the last two. (Score:4, Informative)
Game Changer (Score:4, Interesting)
Many very big companies have been working for many years to make non invasive optical glucose sensors but have been confounded by interference from other biological processes. Be interesting for diabetics if they have really cracked that hard nut.
Blood Alcohol is also very interesting, as you need expensive infrared or fuel cell based instruments to currently measure BAC via breath. (There is a well known ratio of about 2300:1 of blood alcohol vs breath alcohol concentration)
I'll believe when I see it.
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Will it work? (Score:2)
Casio had a blood pressure watch called a BP-1B long ago. You had to calibrate it and put your finger on a sensor on the face of the watch and it didn't work well for many people. They have made others since but they were only sold in some countries likely due to their inaccuracy and medical liability issues.
Well alrighty then (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, non-invasive glucose monitoring would actually convince me buy an Apple watch. God help me and have pity on my soul.
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Yeah, that's how I feel, too. Despite their sweet hardware and nice OS, I hate Apple for their insistence on closing their products. This would be amazing enough to make me forgive them (as I am quickly damned to the hell of St Ignucius).
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There are a lot of heart rate monitors, you don't need an iWatch or even new technology for that.
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Glucose monitoring doesn't seem like a selling point (unless you have diabetes?) to me
Gee, you think?
That's the only real feature that anyone is truly interested in.
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I'd love to see a study result on the accuracy of this. It would be major. But it's a hard problem. The major Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) systems, like Sensonics' everSense, Dexcom's G6, and Medtronic's Guardian systems all require a sensor under the skin.
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https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pres... [ucsd.edu]
"The chemical sensors are two electrodes that are screen printed on the patch from conductive ink. The electrode that senses lactate, caffeine and alcohol is printed on the right side of the patch; it works by releasing a drug called pilocarpine into the skin to induce sweat and detecting the chemical substances in the sweat. The other electrode, which senses glucose, is printed on the left side; it works by passing a mild electrical current through the skin to release inter
Temperature (Score:3)
How about temperature/fever monitoring? That seems important these days. There are many contactless thermometers so they could use the tech from that.
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Coming soon (Score:2)
Gain blood pressure? (Score:2)
My doctor says I shouldn't.
Margin of error: 40% (Score:1)
USD 50 watches have most of this already (Score:1)
I bought a cheap Chinese fitness watch because it can act as a continuous oximeter for monitoring while I sleep. I went cheap because I had not worn a watch in 30+ years, and I wanted to see if I could get back into the habit without a large expense.
The watch also include blood pressure, heart rate variability, breathing rate, and a way to do a single-lead ECG reading. I disabled the non-health-related functionality of the cheap watch because of its use of Chinese servers.
If the Apple watch can finally exce
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There were several, but I ended up with one branded "NiceFuse".
Obligatory (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Blood alcohol (Score:1)
I'd love to get a blood alcohol level when I drink. I want to be able to correlate BAL with how I felt after having X number of drinks. When I see that the BAL legal limit for driving is, eg 0.08, I have no idea what that means in terms of how I feel.
I've always thought it would be a neat public outreach for police if they offer a breathalyzer test at a local bar, totally voluntary, and if you're over the legal limit they offer a free cab/Uber home.
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Back in the 90s a company did a sort of breathaliser vending machine - you paid a couple of quid, out came a little plastic nozzle thing and you blew into the machine. It told you your blood alcohol and if you were over the UK limit or not. They put a load of them into pubs and bars.
Then along came the beer swilling rugby set. They'd go on a bender, then have competitions to see how high they could get the machine to register. Games such as the "cointreau mouthwash" [studentrecipes.com] were on the tame end of those challenges
Re: Blood alcohol (Score:2)
Interesting! That's a fair point, I could imagine college kids drinking themselves to alcohol poisoning because they've made a game out of seeing who could score the highest BAL.
I also imagine seeing lawsuits from people who are using it to decide whether they're below the legal limit to drive, but aren't because of uncertainty/bias in the measurement.
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Obsolete (Score:2)
Meh. I bought an Apple watch back in 2017. It still works just fine but apparently doesn't have enough capacity to be updated any more. It pesters me about being updated even though every time I try, it fails. I'm reluctant to drop it into a drawer and buy a new one. Much like the iPhones I guess even though they're pissing me off to no end as well, blocking me from playing songs from my collection and refusing to sync with my desktop any more.
[John]