[HN Gopher] FDA stands against using smartwatches to monitor blo...
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FDA stands against using smartwatches to monitor blood glucose
Author : alwillis
Score : 21 points
Date : 2024-02-23 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| advisedwang wrote:
| The agency that approves medical devices warns people with
| serious medical conditions that using devices that haven't passed
| their standards is a risk. What a shocker.
|
| As the article says, tech companies have been able to get FDA
| approval for the ECGs on smart watches. Tech companies should do
| the same for any other medical features they want to sell.
|
| I am glad to have stringent standards that are upheld and
| enforced.
| bluGill wrote:
| Approved for what? There is a difference between approved for
| people with and people without diabetes. If you have diabetes
| you may want this, but if it isn't very accurate it isn't going
| to do what you want. If you don't have diabetes though this
| could be a useful thing sitting on your watch, ready to give an
| alarm that you need to see a doctor because things are looking
| bad - people often go diagnosed with mild diabetes for a long
| time (depending on when their next physical is) and starting
| treatment for those people sooner can improve long term quality
| of life. Or if you do have diabetes maybe this can sometimes
| say do an extra blood sugar test at a time when normally you
| wouldn't (so long as there are not too many false positives)
| lokar wrote:
| It would be useful and probably safe for a diabetic that is
| not using insulin. Even pre diabetics, just understand how
| your blood sugar reacts to various foods and activities is
| really helpful for people trying to manage the disease.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Blood glucose is hard. Witness Theranos' attempt to do blook
| analysis without sufficient samples.
|
| It apparently can be done from surface contact, with a special
| patch that measure interstitial epidermal fluid. Do these watches
| have that?
| stop50 wrote:
| No, they want to use light refraction to measure the glucose
| level.
| m463 wrote:
| I'm glad they are holding their ground.
|
| Also, I remember reading "the glucose revolution" and I found it
| interesting that blood glucose is only part of the picture. We
| currently don't measure fructose level, and that might have
| effects separate from blood glucose levels.
|
| Hopefully folks will go back to the drawing board and either
| lower the cost of the other continuous measuring devices, or move
| current tech onwards to acceptable accuracy.
| spandrew wrote:
| The title is more alarming than the substance of the article.
| Apple is investing in a novel technology that _may_ be able to
| measure technology using light waves, but the article says it 's
| still in early stages and there's no rush to market with it.
|
| Given Apple's history with ECG and other Apple Watch, FDA
| approved tech there's no nefarious scheme to deliver anything
| that doesn't pass approvals.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Imagine we could have a near real time effect of what we eat and
| then we discover that high fructose products are _really really_
| bad.
|
| Also imagine that the corporations that produce those products
| are the worse when it comes to corruption through lobbying.
| qup wrote:
| I don't know what _really really bad_ means to you, but we can
| look around and see people who have eaten fructose their whole
| lives to no obvious effect. Almost every person I see.
|
| So it's not going to meet my personal definition of _really
| really bad_.
|
| It's already clear and well known that it's bad.
| grecy wrote:
| Cancer rates will soon be over 50%, and obesity and heart
| disease have never been higher.
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(page generated 2024-02-23 23:00 UTC)