alt Hacker NewsFDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels
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Automated glucose control will be the next frontier in so many areas of healthcare. I'm still skeptical that anyone will be able to noninvasively and accurately sense blood sugar, but I'm glad people (especially kids with T1) will have one more tool to help them. I hope they can figure out the reimbursement side to get it into the most hands possible!
Understanding why children's pancreases stop delivering insulin in the first place, which remains one of the big medical mysteries, would be a huge breakthrough for preventative medicine.
Ketones are only going to be present if you are exceptionally bad (very high carb diet) or exceptionally good (very low carb diet) at managing your blood sugar. It's not going to be terribly useful for your average diabetic who has fairly good control over their blood sugars.
How long has the tech existed to do this?
Does anyone know if something like this is required to be approved by the FDA? Like if someone were to make one for the hobbyist/weight loss market, would that even be legal?
I have to imagine Apple was pushing for similar functionality but probably got distracted over the last few years due to the lawsuits.
Reminds me of this warning: https://youtu.be/S6Jiei4Wup4 (Youtube Short from the Drey Dossier)
bet marathoners and ultra runners will start using this to improve performance
(don't have a problem with that, but it's predictable)
too bad it's not "wearable" like a watch but that might be coming eventually too since Garmin has a patent on it
* https://the5krunner.com/2026/02/06/garmin-non-invasive-blood...
(btw Fenix 9 launched today but it's same hardware as Fenix 8 and no glucose feature)
I thought this was going to be a non-invasive sugar-level device, but it looks like in fact the innovation here is that a popular CGM line can now do ketones?
science is awesome
As someone who has to deal with type 1 diabetes every day, this is marketing nonsense. No one needs ketones in the sensor - we need high-quality sensors, and Abbott's are only mediocre at best. They are not as bad as Dexcom, which is appalling, but they are still far from the superior quality of Medtronic/MiniMed which measure glucose exceptionally well.
Ketones are rare. They can kill you, but before that happens, your blood sugar usually rises enough for you to realise you may have ketones and start using test strips to measure them. Instead of this marketing gimmick, Abbott should have focused on improving the quality of their glucose sensors which is far more important.
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Finally. I really dont want to buy yet another watch device unless it provides blood sugar detection.
Looked after my son who has T1D for now 5 years, checked keytones maybe 20 times. Compared to blood glucose which we check look at every 5 minutes.
Maybe this is more for Type 2 or other diabetes, or for people prone to DKA. Or it is for people with a working pancreas who think looking at their blood sugars (and now keytones) tells them something like soothsayers reading tea leaves
A friend died of diabetic ketoacidosis. He loved technology and seeing people succeed. Thinking of him with this news. Miss you Dan.
Grateful we're moving forward on so many fronts in the world.