There have been plenty of rumors about glucose monitoring being one of the new features that arrives with the Apple Watch 7, and that now looks more likely – after Apple mentioned the feature itself in one of its regular user surveys.
As reported by 9to5Mac, the survey asks users about any apps they’ve got installed to track eating habits, medications and blood glucose levels. The implication is that Apple is thinking about adding blood sugar monitoring to its smartwatch in the future.
Other questions cover the health features built into the Apple Watch – step counting, activity rings, reminders to stand up, and so on – and how often they’re used, and the questionnaire then goes on to ask about third-party apps for managing health data.
These user surveys are nothing new, but they can sometimes hint at what Apple is planning for future products. The removal of the charger from the iPhone 12 was a move that had previously been predicted from one of these surveys, for example.
Wait and see
Health and fitness monitoring is of course one of the main selling points of the Apple Watch, and it makes sense that Apple would want to extend those capabilities further. Blood sugar level monitoring would be a useful addition, especially for those with diabetes (and those who have diabetes but haven’t yet had it diagnosed).
The last we heard, glucose monitoring was being tipped for both the Apple Watch 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, so it’s going to be interesting to see which of these tech giants manages to get the feature built into a smartwatch first.
This is much more important than just counting steps though: a reliable monitor for something as important as blood glucose tracking is going to require regulatory approval, which might slow down the process of getting this out to users.
With that in mind, we can well believe a recent rumor that tracking the levels of glucose in the blood is a feature that’s going to have to wait until the Apple Watch 8 in 2022. We won’t know for sure until Apple’s official unveiling, but this helpful addition looks more likely than ever to be on the way.