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New Apple Watch health features: What’s in, what’s out

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Apple Watch won't get blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring soon, but other new health updates are coming.
Apple Watch won't get blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring soon, but other new health updates are coming.
Photo: Lewis Wallace/Cult of Mac

Cupertino is likely to add body temperature readings and other new health features to Apple Watch and the Health app in 2022, but it looks like blood pressure and blood glucose monitoring will have to wait, according to a new report.

For a look at those delays to blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring, as well as the expected new features for women’s health and sleep-, fitness- and medication management, read on.

Apple Watch Series 8 health sensors might include blood glucose monitoring

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The Blood Oxygen sensor employs LEDs, along with photodiodes on the back crystal of Apple Watch Series 6.
Blood glucose monitoring could be a major change in Apple Watch Series 8.
Photo: Apple

Rumors that Apple Watch 7 would include be able to sense the wearer’s blood glucose didn’t pan out. But Apple is reportedly collaborating with a pair of Asian companies to add non-invasive blood sugar monitoring to the 2022 model.

This would add to the already lengthy list of health-monitoring features available in Apple’s current wearable.

New sensor could turn 2022 Apple Watch into a doctor on your wrist

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The Blood Oxygen sensor employs LEDs, along with photodiodes on the back crystal of Apple Watch Series 6.
You might soon be wearing the equivalent of a medical laboratory.
Photo: Apple

A deal between Apple and Rockley Photonics could add new medical sensors to the Apple Watch in 2022. That might include non-invasive monitoring of blood sugar levels, body temperature and blood pressure. It might even add the ability to measure blood-alcohol levels.

The British startup promises to “bring laboratory diagnostics to the wrist.”

Apple Watch Series 7 could pack game-changing blood sugar sensor

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Apple Watch Series 6
This year's Apple Watch upgrade could have a pretty massive new feature.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

This year’s Apple Watch upgrade will reportedly add another potentially transformative medical feature: a blood sugar sensor.

That’s according to a new report from ET News, which says both Apple and Samsung will bake the feature into their respective smartwatches — the Apple Watch Series 7 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 — later in 2021.

Prototype wearable supposedly can monitor blood sugar noninvasively

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Quantum
It might look like an Apple Watch, but it reportedly does something no Apple Watch can do.
Photo: Quantum Operation Inc.

CES 2021 bug A new device shown off at CES may look like an Apple Watch knockoff, but its maker says it can do something Cupertino’s wearable can’t: accurately and noninvasively measure a person’s blood sugar level.

Japanese manufacturer Quantum Operation says its prototype employs a miniature spectrometer to scan blood in the wrist for biomarkers that reveal glucose levels. The user supposedly just puts on the smartwatch and activates the monitoring with a touch. After 20 seconds, the wearer receives the blood sugar data on the device’s screen.