Apple Watch may not have seen the light of day yet, but it is already surrounding itself with practical features that look well prepared to thwart the competition. Coming April, and following the launch of a glucose monitoring app, Apple Watch users will be able to track their glucose levels.
We’ve always known that the Apple Watch will be slightly above the competition in terms of offering some truly personal features for the wearer. Tim Cook has already mentioned that the watch is the most personal device his company has ever done, and as such mentioned the intensive focus on the health and fitness interface as well.
Taking their health front further, Apple has joined hands with DexCom, which will be releasing a glucose monitoring app for the Apple Watch, and when coupled with DexCom’s lineup of glucose monitors which take readings every five minutes from under the surface of the skin, the smartwatch will collect all that information, creating a graph of the readings. Honestly, this is not something that other smartwatch manufacturers running Android Wear cannot do, but the thing is that Apple concerns itself with actually getting the service to the user, down to the glucose monitors in this case.
In what could be good news for the app developers, they will not be required to approve health advising and monitoring apps from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This comes as a result of FDA’s conclusion of categorizing the Apple Watch as a "general wellness" tool in January, stating that the wearable is no medical device. Such non-medical devices are usually concerned with weight management, sleep management, physical fitness, stress or relaxation management, etc. If the Apple Watch or any of its apps were to claim facts regarding treatment or diagnosis, then Apple and its smartwatch developers could have been facing stricter rules, in line with medical devices.
The news of such an app being available following the watch’s launch is a surprising one, given that Apple had stated that third-party app support will only be available long after the device has been released. Till then, only official and apps launched by Apple Watch partners will be supported on the company’s smartwatch.
(Source: WSJ)
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