I have seen several smartwatches from China that purportedly have noninvasive BG monitoring capability. I wouldn’t expect any accuracy comparable to finger stick but curious if they could show a direction? Anyone know of any experience?
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I would be interested if some of our active tech savvy members would try one of these watches. As there is no information on the technology used by them, I suspect they don’t work well if they work at all.
“If something seems too good to be true, maybe it is not living up to the hype.”
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There is a watch called Bluejay that can display bgs from dexcom. Search this site for details.
Most watches on amazon, etc that show BG are just estimates via skin/sweat.
I use a fitbit watch that can also show dexcom bg, using a specific watchface interface called Glance.
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@Penningdcp If @MM2 is correct that these watches from China measure glucose in sweat, that tech was abandoned in the West for 2 reasons.
- There is a considerable lag between blood glucose and that in sweat.
- Many complained of skin irritation from the low current electrical pulse that effected the measurement.
Invasive CGM sensors do have up to 15 minute lag time as the sensor is not in blood but interstitial fluid. The lag is more pronounced when BG is trending fast up or down.
There are several watches that can display Dexcom, I’m not sure about Libre. The BlueJay watch is quite inexpensive if you don’t want features like exercise tracking and other common smart watch features.
Glance as @MM2 linked is an application that will work with FitBit watches.
Garmin watches can display Dexcom using a Dexcom widget.
Apple Watch can display Dexcom as a complication (love/hate that word). The latest update has the Dexcom reading in an ultra fine font. The solution is to tap the circle with BG and it brings up the Dexcom app.
My experience is with Garmin and Apple. Both sometimes are behind what the Dexcom app on my phone is showing. And both of these require a smart phone to be synced to the Dexcom and the watch.
The technology that may give us non-invasive true blood glucose readings is Raman Spectroscopy. There is a device that sits on a table that works fairly well, I understand.
Getting R. Spectroscopy to work in a watch has a number of problems to work out, how to shrink it small enough and how to power it. Then there is the need to test the effect of scanning through the skin with low level radio frequencies. Just like measuring sweat, if the RF causes issues- well that’s a deal breaker.
So what we have are invasive BG sensors some of which can be displayed on a watch.
Pictures of the Apple Watch Dexcom complication and the Dexcom app display.
This one is from a Garmin Edge bicycle computer - The watch would be similar without all the cycling metrics. It’’ hard to see but I did a finger stick with my Contour Nest One meter showing 95mg/dl vs 67mg/dl from Dexcom.
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Thanks for the background information!
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Using xdrip+ you can get Dexcom and Libre readings that are then transmitted via bt to Galaxy tizen OS, Wear Os=S, or iOS watches. There are several watch faces (free) on the WatchMaker web site you can download through the play store app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=slide.watchFrenzy&hl=en_US&gl=US
I have made several that show current BS, trend arrow, update/change in value, and a graph. It is not possible to use any of these as a collecter, as they only show data from the phone.
Mike
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@MM2…Is Glance for Fitbit compatible with the iphone Dexcom app?
You can check here for details for data source. But likely fitbit only.
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