[HN Gopher] Researchers design wearable tech that can sense gluc...
___________________________________________________________________
Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more
accurately
Author : ndrwnaguib
Score : 351 points
Date : 2025-01-05 02:12 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (uwaterloo.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (uwaterloo.ca)
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > 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 Apple has also worked on this stuff in the past, but from
| what I remember the accuracy wasn't good enough to be safe for
| diabetics. I'd be really curious to see accuracy stats on this in
| comparison to Dexcom and Freestyle CGMs.
|
| I would definitely be excited to use something like this, but for
| me, the biggest quality of life improvements for me will be
| continued improvements with closed loop CGM + insulin pump
| systems.
| Scotrix wrote:
| 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 then, Freestyle with Omnipod Dash in a close loop with
| iAPS was a game changer for me: Almost no peaks anymore, HBA1c
| on the level of a non diabetic person...
|
| Nevertheless, good luck in productising it and I'll be
| certainly trying it once it's available...
| smt88 wrote:
| > _Freestyle is good enough already_
|
| In my experience, the quality control isn't very good (some
| patches will read much more accurately than others) and
| accuracy isn't _that_ good when you get out of normal ranges.
|
| I don't think the "invasive" nature of the Freestyle is a
| problem at all, but it would be nice to see some innovation
| on either the cost or the accuracy or both.
| nahsra wrote:
| OP lacks imagination for sure. This would reduce
| infections, prevent compression lows, be more discrete and
| potentially increase accuracy.
|
| In no way would I describe CGM as solved, and this would go
| a long way towards filling many of the gaps, especially in
| younger / older / less compliant patient populations.
| fallsoffbikes wrote:
| 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
| je42 wrote:
| For closed loop better cgms will help.
|
| Main points are (fsl2 based):
|
| - latency, currently 10min.
|
| - accuracy, fine in normal range, but when you have a low
| blood sugar suddenly the latency spikes a lot.
|
| - values when being under the shower too high.
|
| - start up time of 60min could be lower.
|
| -open up the hardware for any app to read
| mjrpes wrote:
| Not having to pay $50-100/mo for CGM patches would also be
| nice.
| solumunus wrote:
| Oh there will be a subscription, don't worry about that.
| rorytbyrne wrote:
| But if they want to capture (or create, commercially) the
| market they'll probably price it closer to $20 or under.
| manmal wrote:
| More likely is a dollar per day for T2 and higher for T1.
| The differentiator will be non-invasiveness, not price.
| brookst wrote:
| Then they will get their lunch eaten when smartwatch /
| ring / etc companies ship it for free. Probably smarter
| to go for market share with affordable one-time costs and
| build revenue from conplementsry goods and services.
| IndeterminateR wrote:
| 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.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| CGMs themselves are still inaccurate compared to needles. And
| even needle based meters have a lot of different levels of
| accuracy. A CGM, even once calibrated, may be off by as much
| as 10%.
| hx8 wrote:
| My understanding is that CGMs shine at having a large
| volume of good data. You can see how your biometrics are
| trending over time much better than the <10/day readings
| someone with manual testing will receive.
| scottyeager wrote:
| It's both. The volume of data is helpful in making
| adjustments to insulin basal rates or dosing ratio. The
| instantaneous data is useful for making immediate
| decisions, either manually or automated, about insulin or
| sugar intake. Seeing a trend line can be much more useful
| than a single reading from finger stick too.
| caseyy wrote:
| The value is in clinical application though. For closed
| loop systems, making a clinical decision for insulin dosing
| every 5 minutes is life-changing, even if the dosage is 10%
| off. I'd say even with compression lows, most systems are
| self-balancing enough to produce better results than a
| self-monitoring person could.
|
| Besides, 10% off doesn't often matter:
|
| At 0-70 mg/dl the pump should suspend insulin either way.
| At 110-600 mg/dl the pump should ensure enough IoB by
| bolus, increase basal, and monitor either way. In that
| 70-110mg/dl the 10% MARD kind of matters for clinical
| decision-making, but not much. 90mg/dl is about as healthy
| as 81 and 99.
|
| Patients are sometimes fussy by this inaccuracy but forget
| the tremendous benefit of trend indicators, let alone
| closed loop systems. Both of these have a much much larger
| positive impact to health than blood glucose being 10%
| above or below target impacts health negatively.
|
| CGM with <=10% MARD, whether in wrist form factor or sensor
| form, is good enough for treatment. Of course, same as most
| readers, I have my doubts about this article.
| opello wrote:
| So maybe it gets paired with the self-attenuating insulin
| and the experience gets even better despite some
| inaccuracy!
| scottyeager wrote:
| For me the worst part of current CGMs isn't the needle or the
| very thin piece of plastic it leaves behind with the probe.
| Rather, it's the effect on the skin under the patch and the
| residual adhesive. So from that perspective a watch would be
| cool.
|
| Indeed though, advancements in (affordable) closed loop tech
| matter more than where the CGM is worn.
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| Can you say more about the plastic left behind? Polyurethane
| coating on the cannula?
| asyx wrote:
| Those might be really great for T2 though. I don't need to know
| the exact number just a ballpark number to know how I'm doing.
| Having always had a bad relationship with food, I fall off way
| too easily without a CGM so for me, those things would be
| perfect.
|
| But also in times where we have the Libre 3 which is so tiny
| that you legit don't even notice it, a CGM on your wrist is not
| worth the loss of accuracy for T1 I guess (assuming your
| insurance pays for it).
| DavideNL wrote:
| > _but for me, the biggest quality of life improvements for me
| will be continued improvements with closed loop CGM + insulin
| pump systems_
|
| You might find this interesting: "A bi-hormonal fully closed
| loop system"
|
| https://www.inredadiabetic.nl/en/home-english/
| manmal wrote:
| Having talked with T1 diabetics about such systems, the issue
| is that you don't want to deplete glycogen stores just for
| basal management. Because your life might depend on their
| levels in case of a severe hypo.
| DavideNL wrote:
| What exactly do you mean by _" you don't want to deplete
| glycogen stores"_ ?
| sudohackthenews wrote:
| It sounds like the system would release a hormone known
| as glucagon when blood sugar levels are too low. Glucagon
| triggers cellular pathways that break down glycogen
| stores into glucose molecules, and releases the glucose
| into the bloodstream. This is opposed to how diabetics
| handle it normally, by merely eating a sugary snack-
| however that takes longer to impact blood sugar levels.
| Depleting these stores could be catastrophic when they
| actually need a large amount of sugar to be dumped into
| the bloodstream
|
| Disclaimer: not a doctor or biologist
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Yes T1 here, those body glucose reserves shouldn't be
| used for regular control. They are reserves for exertion
| and emergencies. 42 years in, I'm fortunate with a high
| metabolism and I've always consumed fat as somewhat free
| extra calories. I use olive oil as a condiment I feel it
| gives me a standing energy reserve.
| omnicognate wrote:
| I don't use one or have diabetes but my understanding is that
| current CGMs measure interstitial glucose levels, which lag
| blood levels by up to 15 minutes. As a result, I believe those
| who require accurate spot measurements rather than just overall
| trends are still recommended to use finger stick tests.
|
| In the article, the researcher claims "No other technology can
| provide this level of precision without direct contact with the
| bloodstream", so it sounds like they're claiming it's better
| than existing CGMs in a way that might be clinically relevant.
| Not sure if that's plausible or whether they are directly
| measuring blood glucose rather than interstitial.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Type 1 here, a 15 min lag is fine. The constant sampling
| especially overnight and the multiday graphs are what I love
| about CGM. I've always been in decent but loose control 6.7
| to 7.1 A1C (longer term measurement). After a year w CGM I
| got to 6.5. Now last checkup I'm at 5.9, this ties my record
| from my first month on Lantus insulin, never repeated in 19
| years until now. Also getting numbers on phone and checking
| number every 15 min while driving are amazing. The stock
| software for Dexcom and Freestyle are both abysmal. Both
| refuse to allow silent mode, Dexcom has a hard 6 hours left
| on sensor uninteruptable alarm, woke me up at 4 am, coustomer
| service had nothing to say, so Goodbye. I went back to
| Freestyle their handheld reader is silencable and I use a
| third party app called Juggluco for my Android phone. Sorry
| I've survived 42 years on human insulin I don't want software
| taking over my life w unsilencable alerts. Anyone w less than
| 10 or 20 years OK, but my brain has extra backup pathways and
| I'm still functionable down to 50 (very rare), and I can
| recognize dimished coordination and the emotional shifts that
| accompany dips. Plus I have life experience to know my low
| time of day and to watch w exertion.
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| Not diabetic myself but managing my little kids T1. If we could
| go from one poke every 10 days to 0 pokes, I am all in.
| Skeptical of the accuracy as well though especially for someone
| who is too young to fully participate and not fully
| hypoglycemic aware.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Low sugar awareness is a learned and developed skill. As
| blood sugar drops, systems shut down. The issue is that the
| Frontal Lobe turns off at some point. Thankfully the energy
| conservation reduces that impact, but once severely low I can
| answer a myriad of questions wrongly. I reccomend cake-mate
| frosting tubes used to write on cakes as an emergency prep.
| That can be squeezed carefully into mouth between teeth and
| gums and begins a bootstrap process. Another suggestion make
| the low fun emotionally so please try and hide anger and
| fear. With the sensor and fairly tight control we haven't
| needed the cakemate in years now but it's good to have. A
| Glucagon shot is another thing to keep around too. I use
| olive oil on my food to have unsaturated fat as a backup
| nonglycemic energy source. Just be mindful virgin olive oil
| isn't to be used for cooking, only refined non-virgin is for
| cooking. Also fyi Walmart has always had affordable diabetic
| supplies. I use their meter and strips as an extra spare.
| Their Relion glucose pills are very good too, I keep them
| everywhere and carry them with me. To equate blood sugar to
| body mass divide weight in pounds by 4.4 (kilograms by 2),
| that gives a number for what 100 equals in grams of
| carbohydrates to better fine tune sliding scale insulin
| dosages and not overcorrecting lows. Best wishes as it is
| very stressful for loved ones.
| analog31 wrote:
| 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.
| RachelF wrote:
| Yes, the article is thin on facts. No mention of the frequency
| that they use, and how they measure the glucose level, which
| I'm guessing is some sort of spectral response.
|
| I'll take a closer look at the paper in Nature.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Direct link (from end of article):
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00194-4
| RachelF wrote:
| Thanks for that.
|
| The paper is way overhyped. They've just built a meta
| material near field antenna. Nothing new I can see.
|
| There are other papers available via Googling that glucose
| can be measured at around 4.2GHz. Seems hard to do it
| reliably, though.
| MBCook wrote:
| 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, outside of the obvious
| direct benefit it would provide their customers.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| analog31 wrote:
| In the past, the pharmaceutical companies were big enough to
| serve as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for these
| startups. Now Apple. On separate occasions, I've met two
| people who tried this, in two different start-ups, though it
| was a different kind of spectroscopy in each case.
|
| The challenge is, there's no a priori proof that a method
| can't work, because the information you need to make that
| assertion has to come from the same kind of research as
| trying to make it work. So far the start-ups have all failed
| in the same way, which is that a signal that looks promising
| in a test tube can't be reliably distinguished from the
| myriad sources of variation in the living system.
|
| Note that I'm not in any way discouraging the work, just
| offering some historical context for the problem space.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I wonder if this micro-radar or whatever could be used for brain-
| computer interfaces somehow.
| devmor wrote:
| Radar doesn't seem like it would be particular useful for
| electrochemical activity.
| ilaksh wrote:
| https://healthylongevitychallenge.org/winners/multi-modal-
| mi...
| paulcole wrote:
| This is 5 years away from being 5 years away.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| Even orange pi watch promised something like this... Do we have
| any updates on it?
|
| https://www.notebookcheck.net/Orange-Pi-Watch-D-Pro-New-smar...
| nahsra wrote:
| It won't fly under the radar when this technology actually
| works. The FDA actually has warned, IIRC, that there's a bunch
| of charlatans selling stuff that doesn't work.
| gary_0 wrote:
| 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.
| pythonguython wrote:
| 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.
| rkagerer wrote:
| 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
| boon to diabetics. Why not get the concept working and demo some
| hard stats, then miniaturize?
| nradov wrote:
| Type-2 diabetes is commonly comorbid with hypertension (similar
| root causes) so combining both sensors in a single wrist device
| would be useful for many patients. There are existing wrist
| blood pressure monitors such as Aktiia. Not as accurate as an
| arm cuff, but good enough for routine monitoring.
|
| https://aktiia.com/
| froil wrote:
| Where can i buy?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| > 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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.
| azinman2 wrote:
| But they have a minimal viable product! It's viable! /s
| caseyy wrote:
| Well... yes. Looking at the article, it satisfies the MVP
| requirements for getting grant funding. A bar GlucoWatch
| cleared more than two decades ago, though it could never
| quite clear the bar of clinical viability.
|
| Theranos also had an MVP in this sense :)
| cb321 wrote:
| I have probably seen "viable" overinterpreted 100s of
| times by now. Perhaps we need to re-interpret the 'V' in
| "MVP" as "VC-investable" or perhaps replace it with 'I'
| to be I)nvestible which gets you a more pronounceable
| "MIP" (and maybe, just maybe highlights uncertainty since
| all investment carries risk)? Happens to also abbreviate
| "Multum In Parvo" (Latin for "many/much in little") which
| is not even that far off from the semantic. ;-)
| Terr_ wrote:
| Indeed, and for different audiences, you need to be ready
| to present your MIP with different levels of detail. I
| propose we call this new process... MIP mapping. :p
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap
| sheepscreek wrote:
| It's fair to be skeptical. Personally, I'll believe it
| when I see it in action. There's likely an unexplained
| catch or they wouldn't have shared any hard data in the
| paper.
|
| One possibility is that they want to sell this technology
| to a big company without publicly disclosing all their
| trade secrets. However, this research could have been
| sponsored by a public grant, which would have compelled
| them to share some information. Therefore, they published
| a paper that appears more like a patent application than
| a research paper with solid data. It's still noteworthy
| that it was published in Nature.
| raphman wrote:
| > It's still noteworthy that it was published in Nature.
|
| FWIW, it was not published in 'Nature' but in
| 'Communications Engineering', a journal by Nature
| Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group,
| part of Springer Nature). It is a new Open Access
| journal, established only in 2022. Given the track record
| of their 'Scientific Reports' journal [1], I would be
| rather cautious regarding the quality of the works
| published at 'Communications Engineering'.
|
| IMHO, Nature Portfolio is doing their 'Nature' journal a
| disservice by hosting all of their journals at
| nature.com. I guess this is intentional, letting their
| less prestigious journals profit from Nature's
| prominence.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports#Cont
| roversi...
| m463 wrote:
| I thought apple was trying to get glucose monitoring approved
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noninvasive_glucose_monitor#Ne.
| ..
|
| (different technique)
| raphman wrote:
| Thanks for calling this out. That was also my impression
| after having skimmed their paper: the only link to glucose
| monitoring is that the authors mention a few papers on the
| topic to motivate their research. And looking at the papers
| they cite, I see little evidence that this approach could
| work in practice in the near future. Most of the citations
| [2, 15, 16] are to their own work, which did not look at
| glucose monitoring _in_ the human body.
|
| This is not my field of expertise, and maybe I am
| misunderstanding the papers. But it seems that there is
| little evidence that non-invasive glucose monitoring via
| measuring dielectric properties works reliably in practice.
| No in-the-wild studies, no investigation of potentially
| confounding factors.
|
| Take for example citation 22 from the paper. A study where
| the authors propose a new antenna design. They seem to
| measure how the pancreas changes size during insulin
| production by monitoring its dielectric properties. IIUC,
| they look for a dip in the frequency spectrum caused by
| absorption of a certain frequency band.
|
| But their measurements show an even larger effect when
| measuring on the thumb instead of the pancreas. This effect
| is not explained at all. (My guess: after having patients
| fast for 8-10 hours, giving them glucose will have an effect
| on the whole metabolism, resulting in higher blood flow, and
| that's what they measured).
|
| Also, while they operate the antenna in the GHz range, they
| use a cheap USB soundcard (sampling rate 44.1 kHz) for
| capturing the signal. I did not understand this at all. They
| also repeatedly use the term "dielectric radiation". Seems to
| be a rather uncommon term?
|
| The "machine learning algorithms" mentioned in the title seem
| to be a simple linear regression? They claim an accuracy of
| ~90% and show some sample results. The complete study data is
| only available upon request, however.
|
| [22] S.J. Jebasingh Kirubakaran, M. Anto Bennet, N.R.
| Shanker, Non-Invasive antenna sensor based continuous glucose
| monitoring using pancreas dielectric radiation signal energy
| levels and machine learning algorithms, Biomedical Signal
| Processing and Control, Volume 85, 2023, 105072,
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2023.105072
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| I assume there's an RF mixer somewhere in there.
|
| Edit: read the paper, now more confused
| raphman wrote:
| Thanks :)
| theendisney4 wrote:
| If it fits in a watch a lot of nondiabetics will also buy it.
| It can be much cheaper that way.
| lukan wrote:
| Why would I as a nondiabetic buy it? Out of general curiosity
| for my blood sugar levels?
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| Because it's built-in as an extra feature to a watch that
| you were already gonna buy. Garmin watches can measure
| blood oxygen, but not many people use the feature because
| it drains the battery quickly. Samsung watches can do a
| single lead EKGs. Does that sell you the watch? Probably
| not. Is it yet another thing a company can add to the spec
| sheet and use to justify a price increase? Yes.
| stabbles wrote:
| Endurance athletes already monitor this to figure out how
| to fuel best.
| doxick wrote:
| My garmin watch measures blood oxygen, heart-rare,
| breathing patterns, sleep patterns, stress-levels, etc
|
| Usefull? It is if you use it. I do triathlons and knowing
| exactly where my blood-sugar level is at would allow me to
| focus better on the type of nutrition and the impact of it
| while working out. It would also tell me if i was a bit
| down before a race, so i can take some food.
|
| Basically: this is a game-changer for amateur athletes,
| which would create a tremendous market for it. People i
| know already use the patches to measure as well, or lactate
| measurements, ketone measurements, etc. and that's just at
| the casual amateur level.
|
| Another application that springs to mind is knowing when to
| eat instead of just having lunch and sugar-crashing 2 hours
| later in the office.
| stevage wrote:
| I also wonder if monitoring your blood sugar is a
| potential way to avoid becoming a Type 2 diabetic.
| fragmede wrote:
| That's what HelloLingo is selling. A wearable blood
| glucose monitor for 2 weeks, like diabetics wear, so non-
| diabetics can get a better feel for their blood sugar
| level and how what they do affects it.
| https://www.hellolingo.com
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| To fuel their "low carb" low carb eating disorder.
| mzhaase wrote:
| Would be a real game changer for endurance sports. There is
| "bonking" - depletion of muscle glycogen. When that happens
| your race is over. Sometimes it happens even to high level
| athletes what feels like out of the blue. If you knew ahead
| of time your blood sugar is getting low you could prevent
| it.
| lukan wrote:
| "If you knew ahead of time your blood sugar is getting
| low you could prevent it."
|
| If I am connected to my body, I can also feel it by own
| biological sensors. But I do see the use case, to get
| another data input, for those cases where I am distracted
| and don't pay too much attention on myself.
| e40 wrote:
| Because many of us have high blood sugar but are not
| diabetic and knowing the impact of diet on blood sugar
| would be a boon to controlling the issue.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not general curiosity -- but for healthier eating.
|
| There's a theory that says you basically won't ever gain
| weight if you prevent your blood sugar from going above a
| certain level. So it's an objective way of knowing how much
| to eat and when.
|
| Also, to warn when blood sugar is too low. Some people
| (myself included) often get so into work (or whatever) that
| we forget to eat, with adverse consequences. An alert is
| very helpful.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| I think this is a really important point. Making it a feature
| in millions of watches will drive the cost of implementation
| down
| mlhpdx wrote:
| No mention of the actual accuracy (and precision) which is
| critical, obviously. Or did I miss it?
| ars wrote:
| Maybe one of these has it:
| https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=BuqNOOwAAAAJ&hl=en
|
| Edit: It's here:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00194-4
|
| But he's clearly spent his entire career on this!
| kumarvvr wrote:
| How can an algorithm be "artificial intelligence algorithm"?
|
| Does it mean AI models are used for data fitting? Or clustering?
|
| For data generated in such low scales, wouldnt statistical
| methods or procedural methods be sufficient or efficient or both?
| gandalfgreybeer wrote:
| As an engineer working in the field who has designed both cloud
| algorithms and on-firmware algorithms, when marketing uses AI,
| it tends to just be training/data fitting. At best, the most
| complicated ones tend to be random forests and if any use
| neural networks, it's usually just overkill.
|
| The answer to your last question is yes, especially when it's
| from raw signals.
|
| Tbf, there are applications from devices that do use deep
| learning methods but from experience they are not practical
| except on very edge cases.
| jval43 wrote:
| > _when marketing uses AI_
|
| In my experience when marketing wants to use AI, they will.
| Regardless of whether it is ML, basic statistics or even just
| a few if-else blocks.
|
| It used to be the way you describe up to about 2-3 years ago,
| now the term is meaningless.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| If you hard-code effective learned distributions from a trained
| model, I suppose that could be described as an 'AI algorithm',
| even though the final output is a flat algorithm.
| bregma wrote:
| In modern common usage both the terms "AI" and "algorithm" are
| just newspeak for "a computer does something" so combining the
| two into a single phrase just superlatively multiplies the
| value, like how using a double negative emphasizes how very
| much more negative something is. In the middle ages the term
| might have been "miraculous" and it could also be well served
| just by sampling Magnus Pike exclaiming "SCIENCE!".
| ars wrote:
| This title needs that missing exclamation mark. I read it
| straight as a single sentence and wondered when people used
| needles on their wrist.
| jimrandomh wrote:
| 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.
| mmooss wrote:
| What about this research indicates to you that it doesn't
| address the accuracy issue?
| morganherlocker wrote:
| > Shaker said. "No other technology can provide this level of
| precision without direct contact with the bloodstream."
|
| The existing alternatives _do_ have access to the
| bloodstream.
| mmooss wrote:
| How does that indicate that they didn't address the
| accuracy of their technology, as the GGP claims?
|
| > The existing alternatives do have access to the
| bloodstream.
|
| So? Who says otherwise? People don't want invasive tests
| that have direct contact with their bloodstream.
| whatnotests2 wrote:
| 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.
| potamic wrote:
| They seem to be using radio waves instead of optical? Do radio
| waves penetrate the body or do they hypothesize that there will
| be changes on the surface of the skin due to blood
| sugar/pressure?
| pythonguython wrote:
| Yes, it is sub optical RF sensing. The important factor here is
| that the gluclose blood capacitively couples to small sensing
| antennas. The sensing antennas are resonant elements, whose
| exact resonance changes depending on the surrounding
| environment, in this case gluclose in the blood. You can then
| transmit an RF signal to the antenna, then record the signal
| reflected from the antenna's port to estimate the gluclose
| level.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Do radio waves penetrate the body
|
| Generally, yes. Attenuation varies by frequency, and I guess
| blood sugar and pressure, though.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > "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.
|
| I see this a lot. People seem to ignore the "viable" part of MVP.
| If there's more work to be done to make it a full marketable
| device, it isn't viable in its current stage.
|
| I wish them luck.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > and microcontrollers, which process the radar signals using
| artificial intelligence algorithms
|
| So glad we've rebranded primitive ML and basic control mechanisms
| as AI.
| winter_blue wrote:
| Or maybe just a signal processor is being rebranded as AI.
|
| Soon a Fast Fourier Transform will be rebranded as AI as well.
| cdmckay wrote:
| Wasn't ML always considered AI?
| consp wrote:
| I've never seen ML been called AI until the past few years.
| And this is most likely not even ML but just fancy signal
| processing.
| raincole wrote:
| Except AI has _always_ meant quite primitive things.
|
| AI predates C. Actually AI predates lisp:
|
| > IPL was used to implement several early artificial
| intelligence programs, also by the same authors: the Logic
| Theorist (1956), the General Problem Solver (1957), and their
| computer chess program NSS (1958).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Processing_Langu...
| bregma wrote:
| I had the same complaint over 20 years ago when the phrase
| "game AI" came into widespread use to describe a computer
| opponent. Now that we have an entire generation raised on the
| concept that anything a computer does is "AI" is it surprising
| everything a computer does is termed "AI"?
| caseyy wrote:
| This all sounds exciting, and good luck to all researchers
| earnestly working on it. If RF blood content diagnostics become
| possible, blood glucose sensing would be just the start.
|
| But as for this guy and his invention, don't forget that in
| clinical setting, Theranos has shown more evidence of their
| product working. And GlucoWatch, a similar idea two decades ago,
| was FDA-approved and made it to market though still wasn't
| clinically useful due to poor accuracy. Then, I'm not even
| talking about the charlatan cottage industry around glucose
| sensing watches, nor am I talking about how CGMs are a
| (generally) solved problem in diabetes.
|
| Let's wait for some clinical trials of the applied blood glucose
| sensing before we pop the champagne? It quite likely won't
| happen, welcome as that invention would be.
| consp wrote:
| > CGMs are a (generally) solved problem in diabetes.
|
| Good to know I'm not generally then.
| pythonguython wrote:
| According to the paper, this worked because the dielectric
| change from all other blood diagnostics was negligible,
| allowing glucose to be measured. Gluclose in blood is around 80
| mg/dL. It may be possible to measure other blood chemistry
| metrics that are similar in concentration at other frequencies,
| but there's a lot of blood tests, many of which would probably
| be impossible - like white blood cell count, anything
| enzymatic, something whose concentration is measured in ug/dL,
| or something that has no effect on dielectric properties of the
| blood. I wouldn't expect to see a whole blood panel via
| wearable radar anytime soon, but we may get a few more tests
| from RF sensing.
| felipevb wrote:
| I'm super curious about how far Dexcom and Abbott's research
| departments are with developing these technologies. It could be a
| (partial) disruption for them.
|
| Also - _flashback to Rockley Photonics ($RKLY) - and their years-
| long promise of non-invasive glucose monitoring._
| throwaway_ab wrote:
| I wonder what other health measurements could be obtained with
| this technology? Sending radar through the wrist seems like a
| method that could observe much more information, although I am
| not sure which.
| elric wrote:
| Perhaps common ailments such as iron insuffiency (anaemia),
| excess bilirubin, heck maybe even cholesterol?
| exceptione wrote:
| What I miss in the paper is any accuracy figure for glucose
| sensing. If this is an alternative to needles, how would the
| measurements compare? That is the first question one should ask.
|
| I fear we can assume that, although the approach might be novel,
| it can't replace needles for accurate measurement. But maybe I am
| overlooking the performance comparison.
| DavideNL wrote:
| Yea, it might perhaps be described more detailed in the
| mentioned paper (i haven't checked it yet.):
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-024-00194-4
|
| EDIT: No, i don't think it's mentioned...
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| They claim 90-some percent
| SteveVeilStream wrote:
| This sounds great for the problem they are trying to solve but it
| also sounds like it could be useful for a lot of other
| interesting applications. I would assume you could put the same
| sensor on a plastic pipe and infer details about the liquid
| inside. If I was this team, I might look at how to commercialize
| this tech for industrial process control in parallel with the
| slow process of commercializing it for medical purposes.
|
| "The system's key components are a radar chip, which sends and
| receives signals through the body, an engineered "meta-surface",
| which helps focus these signals for better accuracy, and
| microcontrollers, which process the radar signals using
| artificial intelligence algorithms. The algorithms improve the
| accuracy and reliability of the readings by learning from the
| data over time."
| spyder wrote:
| Looks like it's using mm-wave radar technology to detect changes
| of the dielectric properties of solutions with different levels
| of glucose.
|
| There is also a paper from them doing it with the Google's
| Project Sali dev kit, the radar that was mostly demonstrated with
| gesture recognition, but looks like it's useful for other things
| too like this. They also show it can be also used to detect
| glucose levels in drinks too like Coke vs diet Coke.
|
| Besides the current one posted, they have multiple other
| publications about the topic:
|
| Using Project Sali back in 2018:
| https://scholar.google.ca/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...
|
| This one is also nice detailed one:
| https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/3/385
|
| and looks like the current one is about improving this technology
| with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio.
| richarme wrote:
| Nit: Google's project was called Soli.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Looks like it's using mm-wave radar technology to detect
| changes of the dielectric properties of solutions with
| different levels of glucose.
|
| I wonder if this is actually a viable path to detecting blood
| glucose. Wouldn't it be sensitive to other substances that
| affect the dielectric properties of a solution as complex as
| blood?
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| We need to find the api endpoints of the body somehow.
| vinni2 wrote:
| Wonder what happened to so called smart insulin
| https://bristol.ac.uk/news/2018/august/ziylo-deal.html
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| https://www.biocentury.com/article/653947/science-spotlight-...
|
| NNC2215 explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVTS_J7Xmxs
| vinni2 wrote:
| I saw this video but the acquisition happened 6 years ago but
| not much progress after that.
| pakitan wrote:
| There is a company that (allegedly) already produces such a
| device: https://www.knowlabs.co/
|
| I've looked over the studies/tests they've done and they look
| decent, though the accuracy is not that great.
| wsabihi wrote:
| I initially got excited about this (and know people who would
| really love this to exist), but after a bit of digging, I am
| convinced that this is likely a scam. This report explains why
| it is: https://whitediamondresearch.com/research/know-labs-is-
| an-ob....
|
| You could also look at the stock economics to see that this
| company has not behaved like one with a bright future.
| pakitan wrote:
| Yeah, the stock price made me suspicious but I figured that
| it might be due to the not-so-great accuracy plus a lack of
| moat - even if it worked, you'd see a cheap copy on
| AliExpress in 2 weeks. I didn't see the report before though,
| so yeah, I'd agree it smells like scam. Especially when you
| see the CEO dabbles in NFTs
| looopTools wrote:
| If it has sufficient accuracy then this could be cool. But I want
| to see it battle tested before raising my arms to high
| tpoacher wrote:
| A prof of mine back in Oxford told us a story how he invented a
| similar noninvasive _blood_ glucose monitoring technique, shown
| to work, patented it, patent bought by big pharma and silenced.
|
| I'm more than convinced we had this tech ages ago but it was not
| profitable to deploy it. Now either relevant patents are finally
| expiring or the market has changed enough to allow such players
| to enter.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Do you have a link to his patent? You should be able to find it
| by his name.
|
| But the hurdle today isn't in the physical sensing technology,
| it's how to detect an accurate signal from extremely noisy
| data.
|
| Patents aren't the main blocker -- nobody has built this at all
| in a way that is accurate enough. And Apple has been trying
| hard, and they have nothing to do with Big Pharma.
| lolc wrote:
| I'm sceptical of this story. This is a huge market and it was a
| huge market 20 years ago.
|
| I participated in studies with prototype devices to measure
| blood glucose and nobody I talked to mentioned patent blocks.
| justinl33 wrote:
| The comparison to weather satellites is misleading and oversells
| this technology. Weather radar works by detecting water droplets
| at known atmospheric heights - it's a fundamentally different
| problem than trying to measure glucose concentrations in blood
| through layers of tissue. The real breakthrough here isn't the
| radar tech (which has existed for years), it's the machine
| learning pipeline that can extract meaningful glucose data from
| extremely noisy radar returns.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Wake me when I, a consumer, can place an order for one. I keep
| hearing about such devices year in and year out, with none for
| sale. I feel like I will just die of old age or as a World War 3
| casualty way before I can actually buy one.
| barbegal wrote:
| There's far too many variables in skin for any non invasive
| techniques to work reliably in measuring blood glucose levels.
| The patches work fine and are highly accurate. The real next
| innovation is implanting devices inside the skin but the
| miniaturisation of the energy source to do this isn't quite there
| yet.
| algorithmsRcool wrote:
| I'm happy at the prospect of more accurate readings. But
| honestly, the Libre 3 is already simply excellent and I would
| personally prefer the back of the arm location to more wrist
| based tech. I wear a traditional (Citizen) mechanical watch,
| because I hated needing to charge a smartwatch.
|
| I had some issues with the Libre 2 sensor getting knocked off or
| loosening after a few days in the shower. But the libre 3 is
| smaller than a US quarter coin and lasts 15 days and doesn't snag
| on anything. Will this watch exceed that? Because if not, then
| I'm not looking to switch.
|
| Lastly for diabetics or pre-diabetics that are only using finger
| sticks, I CANNOT stress enough how important a CGM is to your
| health. You learn so much about how your body actually works with
| certian foods rather than low frequency (but somewhat more
| accurate) finger sticks and that information dropped my A1C like
| a rock in just a few months. Tell your older relatives also.
| These are life saving devices.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| This article is from 2014 and it should be noted as such. Looking
| at the comments, it's clear people have been misled by the
| presentation of this article to think this is an emerging
| technology rather than an old and inappropriate application of
| one.
|
| For others reading; this is about a small radar technology,
| having nothing to do with research in the detection of blood
| glucose whatsoever.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _This article is from 2014_
|
| How do you know? The date on the article says October 29, 2024
| bkraz wrote:
| For anyone interested in noninvasive glucose sensing, I'd highly
| recommend
| https://www.nivglucose.com/The%20Pursuit%20of%20Noninvasive%...
|
| RF-based approaches have the problem that they are not specific
| to glucose. A molecule of glucose absorbs infrared light at
| specific wavelengths due to its size and types of bonds. It does
| not have specific absorption of radio frequencies. In this paper,
| researchers measured glucose in pure water at concentrations 100X
| physiological levels. I'd like to see this work with whole blood
| or a tissue phantom, or measure glucose independently from any
| other solute.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Sorry to break the party. A buddy of mine is deeply skeptical,
| and he is one of the few with a decent amount of peer-reviewed
| publications about non-invasive blood glucose measurement. The
| idea to use "Radar near-field sensing" is everything but new and
| nothing has ever come out of it.
|
| "Breakthroughs" in this field are a dime a dozen:
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/liom-cracks-holy-grail-non-22...
|
| My buddy is one of the few guys that has a sound (no pun
| intended) technology that might work. But future will tell. I
| won't give a link. Yes, the company secured funding.
| zamadatix wrote:
| This is "my uncle who works at Nintendo said Sony sucks" level
| information to anyone but you.
|
| I do agree on one part regardless of any of that though... I'm
| at the point of waiting for the one who actually sells me said
| device instead of the one that says they'll soon be able to.
| sowbug wrote:
| Slightly OT, but just last night I finished a 15-day Dexcom Stelo
| CGM session. If you can afford the $99, I highly recommend it.
| There is a world of difference between an intellectual
| understanding of blood glucose and actually witnessing your body
| maintaining exquisite control over a system dependent on food,
| exercise, stress, time of day, and the idiosyncrasies of your
| individual insulin response.
| ra7 wrote:
| I've been looking to try an CGM to see how all those factors
| affect my blood sugar. Is Dexcom Stelo the best available OTC?
| How do you like the analytics in the app?
| tlubinski wrote:
| We - at DiaMonTech - are working on non-invasive glucose
| monitoring for over a decade now. It's a hard and complex problem
| and as long as clinical data is missing, I'm very sceptical.
|
| We just reached (in a clinical trial) a comparable accuracy as
| early-stage invasive devices that got FDA approved with a shoe-
| box-sized device and we still have some work to do. The pre-print
| of our publication is here:
| https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5289491/v1
|
| I'm excited to see new developments but in this case, I'm not
| sure this will reach the market anytime soon.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I was actually thinking about your product when venting my
| frustrations elsewhere in the thread. Your site was mentioning
| elsewhere that you had a working shoebox-sized device which,
| "due to its size", was "only targeted at hospitals".
|
| Man, you have no idea. I'd gladly buy a shoebox-sized thing. No
| finger pricking and no test strips to buy is the king. It could
| be 4U rackmount thing for all I care, as long as it was
| noninvasive and accurate.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| Why do you think that this will not reach the market anytime
| soon?
| nis0s wrote:
| If I generally know what my levels are on a daily basis as both
| my diet and my routine is constant, then I don't need a device.
| But I guess some people do.
|
| It's also a little presumptuous to believe that someone would
| want to wear a bulky medical device for an easily manageable and
| non-life threatening condition all the time. If not wearing a
| medical device doesn't kill you, then why do you need to wear it?
| Form factor and comfort is important.
| typon wrote:
| This is one technology that I've been waiting for for over a
| decade. Apple apparently hasn't given up on it, despite working
| on it for 10+ years as well. I am hopeful it can be solved
| because diabetes is one of the biggest killers on Earth today.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Wow just read the press release, they claim it is under clinical
| trials while they keep refining the engineering. They are using
| radar and claim it is actually an improvement over current tech.
| My interest is peaked with my being a type 1 diabetic w 42 years
| on RNA derived insulin and 42 years since starting fingerstick
| blood glucose tests since Febuary 1983. I've been on CGM for
| around 5 or 6 years now.
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