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Comment by SJMG | Hacker News Reader

I'm out of the loop, can this be done without drawing blood now?

It’s been going on for a while - Non-invasive monitoring. Here’s a general link https://www.google.com/search?q=blood+glucose+patent+startup

I believe a firm in Uk holds a patent for it and Apple has partnered with them a while ago.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-takes-key-step-towards-b...

Very neat! If they can crack this, I might actually bite and finally buy one.

To be clear, the research has been going on for a while.

But extracting an accurate enough signal from noise through the skin is an incredibly complex signal analysis problem. And there are multiple approaches.

Nothing has FDA approval yet because it's a major question whether any technology developed thus far is accurate enough. I understand there's at least one clinical trial going on right now. Fingers crossed...

This is pretty much the holy grail, that would make the first person to crack it crazy rich.

So the quick answer is: no, not even close. Also, you would somehow have to measure a very low concentration of soluble chemical in a fluid with always changing composition of a bunch of chemically similar other constituents across relatively wide tissue layers that themselves have a lot of that same chemical..

It's absolutely sci-fi.

You can do it by using interstitial fluid, which is how CGMs work.

But, in short, no, not yet: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/do...

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification and answer.

They're all on a subscription model, you're spending who-knows-how-much per year on a new sensor every few days/weeks. Afraid it'd feel like a prickleburr stuck to me constantly.

It does feel like that for some people (like myself). But it was fun and informative to wear it once for 10 days.

When I used one I didn't notice it was there except when I inadvertently brushed it against something.

I'm the ADD type that runs into shit, or at least I clip corners regularly when going through doorways. Normally... I don't even notice. Ripped two CGM's out in the first month. Shit HURTS.

Tried both of the popular ones: didn't notice either one ever.

> They're all on a subscription model, you're spending who-knows-how-much per year on a new sensor every few days/weeks.

Which - to be clear - is because the sensor chemically degrades over time. It's not just rent-seeking; they genuinely don't know how to make one that'll last longer.

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