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Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

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Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#21

Post by fallsoffbikes »

Scotrix wrote: post #5
Trasmatta wrote: post #2

> Currently, diabetics must frequently prick their fingers or rely on invasive wearable patches with micro-needles to track their blood-sugar levels Type 1 diabetic here - for what it's worth, CGMs aren't particularly invasive. At least in comparison to the many many years of finger pricking! But a smart watch solution would be cool. (I actually do get my CGM readings on my smart watch, which is really nice!) I know…

Agreed, cool and certainly some improvement but Freestyle is good enough already. Next step for me is more towards the new insulin research which activates only on glucose in the bloodstream (don’t recall how it was called but was here more recently also shared). This sounded more self controlling where it’s hopefully just making sure you have enough of it in your body and don’t need to take care of the rest. Until t…

I believe this is a reference to the tech you are talking about. I have a similar take as you: current cgm tech plus closed loop is pretty good. Self activating insulin is the first promising tech I’ve seen in the 40+ years of following the research.

https://youtu.be/lVTS_J7Xmxs?si=vemMfo3IbfMlYrUi

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#22

Post by bluGill »

MBCook wrote: post #20
analog31 wrote: post #3

I work in a related field. Non-invasive blood glucose has been a holy grail for decades. It has bankrupted multiple start-ups. It would be exciting to see something that finally works, but my optimism is tempered.

Apple has already been working on this, would love the feature, and has an absolute hell of a lot of cash. They also know how to turn very complicated things into miniaturized production products. If they could provide enough proof that it works the way they say it does, I bet they could find a really good suitor there. And you know the various other health/smart watch companies would love to get one up on Apple, out…

The problem is we don't know if the proqlem is solvable. We get data of course but it needs to be accurate to be useful and that may or may not be possible.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#23

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

rkagerer wrote: post #12

Sounds exciting, but the fact their prototype is in a wristwatch form factor makes me wonder if it's aiming to be more of a media showpiece to hype investment valuation from those industry partners. Forward looking statements like "maybe we'll make it monitor blood pressure too" don't help. Even at the size of a brick, or without conveniently hiding the power supply off-camera, forgoing needles would still be a huge…

That's because it's bullshit.

To clarify, the actual science they did is interesting (to me at least, as someone not in the field). The paper is linked here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00194-4

What is bullshit is the completely unwarranted conclusions in the title or in the quotes in the article. This is classic "science by press release".

If you notice in the paper, they didn't do any testing, at all, with actual humans (or animals) and their blood sugar levels. The paper is mainly about the design of this "metasurface" which they claim allows higher resolution and sensitivity of a millimeter-wave radar system. The leap from what they've done to "no more needles for diabetics" is about 100x of "draw the rest of the owl".

Again, to emphasize, I'm not denigrating the science they've done. I'm denigrating the hyping of it.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#24

Post by pythonguython »

gary_0 wrote: post #11

The explanation of how it works sounds like hand-wavy technobabble from a bad sci-fi thriller. Micro-radar metasurfaces? Amazing that it's actually a real thing.

It sounds more complicated than it is. A metasurface is almost always just a fancy patch antenna. If you reduce some parameters down, you can really just view it as a resonant circuit. You could design a meta surface in a few minutes in any pcb design software and get it fabricated on low tech PCB fabrication equipment. In this case, they used an array of a specific type of patch antennas (that’s a meta surface) called the complementary split ring resonator. In a sense, all split ring resonators are “micro radar” surfaces, because a split ring resonator is designed to be electrically small compared to the wavelength. The researchers here found that the change in glucose in the bloodstream changes the dielectric properties of the bloodstream, and the resonant characteristics of the complementary split ring resonator change depending on the surrounding dielectric (a dielectric just describes the electrical properties of a material - for instance, a higher electric dielectric constant will slow down the phase velocity of an EM wave, which leads to various measurable effects in an RF system). Looks like great engineering work here, but I’ve always thought the term “metasurface” was foo foo jargon since I first began studying antennas.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#25

Post by theendisney4 »

rkagerer wrote: post #12

Sounds exciting, but the fact their prototype is in a wristwatch form factor makes me wonder if it's aiming to be more of a media showpiece to hype investment valuation from those industry partners. Forward looking statements like "maybe we'll make it monitor blood pressure too" don't help. Even at the size of a brick, or without conveniently hiding the power supply off-camera, forgoing needles would still be a huge…

If it fits in a watch a lot of nondiabetics will also buy it. It can be much cheaper that way.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#26

Post by sheepscreek »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23
rkagerer wrote: post #12

Sounds exciting, but the fact their prototype is in a wristwatch form factor makes me wonder if it's aiming to be more of a media showpiece to hype investment valuation from those industry partners. Forward looking statements like "maybe we'll make it monitor blood pressure too" don't help. Even at the size of a brick, or without conveniently hiding the power supply off-camera, forgoing needles would still be a huge…

That's because it's bullshit. To clarify, the actual science they did is interesting (to me at least, as someone not in the field). The paper is linked here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00194-4 What is bullshit is the completely unwarranted conclusions in the title or in the quotes in the article. This is classic "science by press release". If you notice in the paper, they didn't do any testing, at all…

> they didn't do any testing, at all, with actual humans (or animals)

They did mention in the article that clinical trials are on-going.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#27

Post by jimrandomh »

This is yet another in a long line of glucose-measurement devices designed to sell to unsophisticated research grantmaking agencies, rather than to diabetics. Making a device that "measures" blood sugar in a watch form factor is easy, and many research groups have done so. Making one that's accurate enough to compete with the CGMs that are already on the market is a different matter entirely.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#28

Post by IndeterminateR »

Trasmatta wrote: post #2

> Currently, diabetics must frequently prick their fingers or rely on invasive wearable patches with micro-needles to track their blood-sugar levels Type 1 diabetic here - for what it's worth, CGMs aren't particularly invasive. At least in comparison to the many many years of finger pricking! But a smart watch solution would be cool. (I actually do get my CGM readings on my smart watch, which is really nice!) I know…

CGMs are probably going to still be more accurate, so the watch may not be ideal for Type 1, but could be nice for people with pre-diabetes who are trying to optimize their health. I'm also curious how accurate they will be.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#29

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sheepscreek wrote: post #26
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's bullshit. To clarify, the actual science they did is interesting (to me at least, as someone not in the field). The paper is linked here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00194-4 What is bullshit is the completely unwarranted conclusions in the title or in the quotes in the article. This is classic "science by press release". If you notice in the paper, they didn't do any testing, at all…

> they didn't do any testing, at all, with actual humans (or animals) They did mention in the article that clinical trials are on-going.

Correct, but I'm extremely skeptical, and that sentence had my bullshit detector alarms screaming even louder:

> “We have a minimum viable product that’s already being used in clinical trials, and while there’s more work to be done, we’re much closer to a full marketable device,” Shaker said.

Absolutely no information about what this "clinical trial" entails, or what phase it was. Most importantly, to get an initial assessment of the accuracy of the device, no clinical trials are necessary - you simply need to do a test that compares the blood sugar reading from the device against the current gold standard, most likely first in some animal model.

If their device was really as far along as the title and quotes are implying, they would be showered with so much money it would make the Theranos peak valuation look small. The only evidence they've provided (which, again, I'm not saying is insignificant) is that the "metasurface" they have developed enhances the resolution and sensitivity of a radar system against a beaker of water.

Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately

#30

Post by whatnotests2 »

Remarkable work! I was part of a team in 2014-2016 that tried using silicon micro needles layered with polymers in order to filter the interstitial fluid's glucose. Unfortunately it was difficult to calibrate for all the variables. We could have two sensors from the same silicon wager on the same person at the same time and get two different readings.

Hats off to these researchers, who went a different direction.

Better health really can start with glucose monitoring for everyone. Because we could all learn about sugar's effect on our bodies.

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