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!
I am a founder and researcher at https://replica.health and co-creator of https://metabo-net.org. This is super exciting and cant wait to see what we can learn once large datasets of overlapping ketones + glucose + insulin data become available.
One point I discussed with other researchers at ADA this year: in theory automated insulin delivery does not stand to benefit much from ketone sensors, since diabetic ketoacidosis will almost always be preceded by high blood glucose, which we already measure using the cgm. It will be interesting to see what this ketone data is actually used for.
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.
just got the https://www.stelo.com/ device. Doesn't hurt at all to install under your arm. The applicator just does this big SNAP! when you press the button and the filament goes under your skin but it's painless and no blood, it's not a needle at all.
“Wearable” seems misleading. It looks like this is inserted into the arm like a cgm? Or am I looking at the wrong product?
Any word on how it works? Couldn't find any info
What a remarkable legacy. I hope this technology helps prevent others from being lost to DKA. May Dan’s memory live on through the people he inspired and the communities he helped create.
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.
How long has the tech existed to do this?
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)
so weird this is at the top. I just wrote an article yesterday about zuck and the masterclass that the meta ray-ban glasses are.
Wearables ain't going anywhere but up.
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?
Is it trustable?
Reminds me of this warning: https://youtu.be/S6Jiei4Wup4 (Youtube Short from the Drey Dossier)
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
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.
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.