The report says the electronics company wants to develop continuous blood pressure checking along with glucose monitoring. It comes as part of an effort to incorporate health features in Samsung devices, like its Galaxy Ring, Bloomberg says. Hon Pak, a Samsung executive in charge of this push, told the outlet in an interview that the company is putting “significant investment” toward these new functions.
According to Bloomberg, Samsung is considering several possible avenues for this technology, including miniaturization. Pak expects to see non-invasive glucose monitoring hit the market in some form within five years, the outlet said.
While the report has no projected timeline for the Samsung project itself, if and when it moves forward, it will likely rival Apple and other tech companies making this health push. Just under one year ago, Bloomberg reported on Apple’s own “moonshot” project focused on non-invasive glucose monitoring.
This non-invasive technology, which doesn’t penetrate the skin, comes in the form of a prototype device (around the size of an iPhone) strapped to the bicep. Bloomberg says Apple’s overall goal remains to bring this technology to the Apple Watch.
However, such an offering could change the landscape of a market dominated by technology that users insert into their skin. Fingersticks — needles for pricking blood samples to measure glucose levels — were, for a long time, the standard.
Dexcom and Abbott develop their CGMs — the G7 and FreeStyle Libre 3 representing the most recent innovations — that users insert and replace after a set amount of days (10 and 14 days, respectively). Meanwhile, there are health-focused companies, like Know Labs and Nemaura Medical, working on non-invasive glucose monitors as well.
