Memorandum
Yesterday, the International Business Times reported that Microsoft’s upcoming smart watch will include a glucose monitor. The article, which quotes an unnamed “Microsoft source,” says the product is slated to launch before the end of 2014. Microsoft has not officially commented on the piece, so it’s challenging to know if this is mere speculation or legitimate news. Still, there is some grounds to think this more than hearsay – a May 2014 Microsoft patent filing for a smart watch device (“Wearable Personal Information System”) references the words “optical sensor” 26 times (e.g., “measuring a biometric parameter of the user via the optical sensor”). The word “glucose” is not specifically mentioned, but it could very well be the unnamed “biometric parameter” cited 11 times in the application. As we noted in our story on the Google/Novartis licensing deal from earlier this week, minimally/non-invasive glucose monitoring has been a goal for many years, but has not come close to fruition – as a result, we are always skeptical of such news at first blush. Still, rumors have swirled for months that Apple’s upcoming iWatch will also include glucose monitoring (as of this June 20 article, it is apparently awaiting FDA approval, and this July 11 article claims it will include a glucose monitor) – with that in mind, the speculation for a similar Microsoft device was not overly surprising. For now, we’ll stay tuned on both fronts until there is something more firm on which to report back.