According to a recent Bloomberg report, the Apple Watch 7 may not include a blood glucose sensor.

According to the CDC's 2020 National Diabetes Statistics Report, 34.2 million Americans, or essentially 1 in 10, have diabetes. Meanwhile, about one in three American adults has prediabetes. This is a sizable population that would immediately benefit from smart watch sensors designed to read blood glucose levels when traditional testing methods may not be available.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, a potential competitor to the Apple Watch 7, is expected to offer non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, but Apple reportedly will not release a version of this feature until after 2022. Instead, the next Apple Watch will reportedly feature incremental improvements in design and performance.

The Apple Watch is accustomed to incremental changes. Apple tends to wait to appropriate health features, which is probably why its watches dominate nearly half of the global smartwatch market. The company has yet to encourage annual or semi-annual upgrades to its $399 smartwatch like the iPhone; with the exception of the Apple Watch 4's ECG app, Apple has been slow to market wellness features compared to other top wearables. [For example, wrist-based pulse oximetry was not new when Apple adopted it. Blood oxygen measurement apps were the centerpiece feature of the Apple Watch 6, but were available on many of Fitbit's best models and the Galaxy Watch. In addition to these brands, Garmin's top-of-the-line watches also offered sleep tracking data long before the Apple Watch.

Apple also introduced a mindfulness app in watchOS 8 and is just beginning to catch up with its competitors' mental wellness efforts.

Samsung is actively working on Raman spectroscopy, a method that uses lasers to help identify the chemical composition of glucose through the skin. This laser, developed by Samsung researchers, reportedly provides high predictive accuracy. Fitbit, Inc. will not be far behind in its own research and implementation. Earlier this year, the company released a blood glucose monitoring tool for the Fitbit app.

Last year, I documented the benefits of the Apple Watch for diabetic pump users when I helped one of my best friends decide which smartwatch model to buy. While I can't say I understand the responsibility of constantly managing a major metabolic function, I have seen how advancing technology has eased and improved my friend's relationship with fixing her blood glucose levels. [The Apple Watch cannot check glucose levels on its own; it must be paired with a continuous monitoring system like Dexcom The Dexcom app for the Apple Watch mirrors the information available in the smartphone app, and provides the user's current glucose levels and general glucose trends at a glance.

Still, there is a major drawback - monitoring requires a smartphone; if the iPhone is broken or out of Bluetooth reach, the Apple Watch cannot be used to obtain glucose readings from the body's insulin pump. In such cases, getting readings on demand from the Apple Watch could be a game-changing and even life-saving tool.

It is important to note that such a smartwatch feature cannot possibly replace all invasive testing. Even if it works well and offers convenience, there are other concerns, such as how the addition of health sensors on the Apple Watch would affect price and battery life.

That is probably why the blood glucose reader is considered a 2022 addition, rather than being announced with the Apple Watch 7. But Apple should hope that Samsung and other major smartwatch manufacturers are not preparing their own versions of this tool quite soon. This is not the year to fall behind in wellness technology advances, as we are about to emerge from a pandemic where health awareness is at an all-time high.