The U.S. government says one out of every ten Americans has diabetes, and the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 3 Americans could have the disease by 2050. Those are the numbers Apple is looking at as it reportedly works to develop a sensor that could monitor blood sugar levels without piercing the skin.
Diabetes patients need to monitor their blood sugar levels, and CNBC reports that Apple has hired a team of biomedical engineers to work on a “super-secret” solution that would continuously monitor and report blood sugar levels. The project is said to have originally been envisioned by the late Steve Jobs. Roughly 30 engineers are said to be working in a Palo Alto location, and the project is thought to be several years old.
Any medical technology that Apple brings to market will almost certainly need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and the company has reportedly hired a team of lawyers to start navigating the regulatory waters.
Two years ago, Apple announced a series of medical research initiatives, partnering with research hospitals worldwide to develop medical research apps that it hopes will be a prototype for more.
Apple’s ResearchKit apps are helping doctors use iPhones to transform healthcare, according to Apple. The apps leverage sensors that are already built into the iPhone to collect data. Apple stressed that it will never see the data that people send to doctors.
Apple has said that medical research is limited by the difficulty that doctors have in finding suitable subjects. Meanwhile, many people who struggle with medical symptoms are willing to share data if it is secure and easy to do so, and the Research Kit apps are meant to facilitate that.
The company has partnered with selected hospitals to create apps that will allow data sharing by breast cancer survivors as well as by individuals with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, cardiovascular disease and asthma.
Image source: The Odyssey Online
