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Apple Has a Secret Team Working On Non-Invasive Diabetes Sensors (cnbc.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from CNBC: Apple has hired a small team of biomedical engineers to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, miles from corporate headquarters. They are part of a super secret initiative, initially envisioned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors that can non-invasively and continuously monitor blood sugar levels to better treat diabetes, according to three people familiar with the matter. Such a breakthrough would be a "holy grail" for life sciences. Many life sciences companies have tried and failed, as it's highly challenging to track glucose levels accurately without piercing the skin. The initiative is far enough along that Apple has been conducting feasibility trials at clinical sites across the Bay Area and has hired consultants to help it figure out the regulatory pathways, the people said.
schwit1 adds: "From a business aspect, the most interesting part of this venture might be how Apple combines its penchant for secrecy with maneuvering through those regulatory pathways. It's one thing to introduce another new bit of consumer electronics kit. It's an entirely other thing to get a medical device past the FDA."
schwit1 adds: "From a business aspect, the most interesting part of this venture might be how Apple combines its penchant for secrecy with maneuvering through those regulatory pathways. It's one thing to introduce another new bit of consumer electronics kit. It's an entirely other thing to get a medical device past the FDA."
One would either have to have a pump installed, which pierces the skin, or give themselves injections. In actuality, this does nothing for type 1 patients. Holy Grail, I think not.
did anyone else read the title and think of a Wilford Brimley cat saying "Diabeetus"?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Hunting the Deceitful Turkey, John Smith
Explains all.
http://www.mendosa.com/The%20Pursuit%20of%20Noninvsive%20Glucose,%20Fourth%20Edition.pdf
Already debunked
Only a moron who doesn't understand how floating point numbers work would think anything was odd about that example. What are you even doing on Slashdot if you cannot work with simple floating point?
I mean, an AC can understand what is going on with that code and you can't?
SHAME SHAME SHAME
You're a PHP programmer, aren't you - admit it. Go back to "hacker" news.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2+2=5 for sufficiently high values of 2. Had a friend once who was getting a masters degree in math. If any student responded to 1+1 with an answer of two was ridiculed. I do the same thing with high school student in digital electronics class.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
For Reals
It's one thing to have Apple Watch or FitBit misread your heart rate as happens with tattoos. It's quite another to misread blood sugar and let someone go into shock or worse.
Most people with diabetes that I know are concerned with the inaccuracy of the home kits which works with blood. What do you think happens if they have to sign a EULA giving indemnity to Apple? They won't buy it, and honestly neither would I.
Honestly, we need to see if the tech actually goes anywhere. Then we'll have to wait for the first bad incident due to the tech. My guess? It'll be like an Apple watch. A few people will use it, and not the ones who rely on it.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There have been at least commercial attempts to create a spectrographic glucometer. And "Bullwinkle, that trick never works!"
Look up the "Diasensor", the "Dream Beam", and the "Sugartrac", if you can find any traces of them left online. All of them were based on spectrographic analysis. And none of them worked: they discovered that enough other components of skin and blood overlap with the spectral response of glucose that it was not possible to reliably determine the percentage of glucose in blood measured this way through skin And hey, if you're sticking something inside to to measure internally, it has to measure nearby tissue and ignore the inevitable scarring around the probe.
Chemical sensors? We already have those. They can't be kept calibrated. Even the various "continuous sensors" drift like mother flubbers, and have to be recalibrated almost as often as normal glucose testing for Type 1 diabetics would require. So investors? Do yourself some good. Stop trying to invent a better iron lung, and hawking it as "creative". The first artificial pancreas I tested was in 1983, in Dr. Santiago's lab at Barnes Hospital. The technology has not evolved much. It's smaller, and the chemical glucose testing has improved, but it's the same technology.
No, if you want to invest with a high return, at least in human terms, take a good look at Dr. Faustmann's cure for Type 1 diabetes, in its second round of human testing at Mass. General Hospital. It's the difference between inventing a "better iron lung for polio victims", and "inventing the polio victims". In fact, it is vaccine based. It's a successful application of the BCG vaccine, normally used for tuberculosis prevention, to block the auto-immune problem that destroys insulin producing cells. Treat the auto-immune problem, and lab animals and apparently humans cure their own diabetes by turning adult stem cells into insulin producing cells. Curing these most profound diabetics, who are only 5% of diabetics world wide, would cut the cost of diabetes treatment in the US by 50%, especially the very expensive kidney and eye treatments for complications of diabetes. Most diabetes is Type 2, which is a resistant to insulin and can be mostly treated by diet and exercise. (I'm going to hear whinging from a lot of fat, lazy people. Get over it.)
The profit margin is not so high. BCG vaccine is available in millions of doses worldwide, and was originally developed in 1900, so new patents are not that likely. But the human profit margin, and reduction of costs to insurance companies, is *stunning*.
http://www.popsci.com/temporary-tattoos-could-monitor-diabetes-less-invasively
But also google "glucowatch", so far, everyone who attempted to do this failed, but apple may succeed, or give us the illusion to, we'll see.
If this is real, Apple is very much behind the times when it comes to both sensor technology and understanding of the medical device market. Trying a spectroscopic approach (which appears to be the case) is way out of date, that's a generation behind even the FDA cleared tests, and isn't going to compete with the new generation of sensors being developed now.
There are several approaches to continuous monitoring of glucose, going back more than 10 years.
Many of these technologies, particularly the non-invasive ones, are more available outside the US than inside. This has more to do with the way medical device manufacturers are paid than any technical limitation. Bluntly, being in the glucose monitoring business is a great way to lose a lot of money quickly. Yes, the market is big, but it's brutal. Apple's strength is not dominating low margin, highly regulated markets.
Another idiot that doesn't understand anything about floating point precision. As much as I despise Apple, this is not exclusive to any given language or architecture. You can see the same precision problems on Intel and ARM processors too.
While you're correct in your assessment of how floats work, only a twat would think that anyone's knowledge is limited by the tools they might use. People like you are one of the biggest problems with the industry.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Sorry, this was for SuperKendall.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The problem with the industry is tribalism. Only an Objective-C programmer could even read that code, because it's written in code, dude, and only another dude from the same tribe is skilled enough to read it. I mean, shit, man, Objective-C uses message passing instead of methods. Ain't no C++ coders can understand that shit. All them fucking square brackets hurt the eyes.
I'm tired of poking a needle in my finger twice a day to make me bleed so I can check my blood sugar. Then there's the cost/bother of the strips and machine (strips have a short shelf life, machines eat batteries).
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
Turns out this is a really really hard engineering problem to solve and it has been tried so many times before. There's a guy who even mqaintains a book on the subject. http://www.mendosa.com/The%20Pursuit%20of%20Noninvsive%20Glucose,%20Fourth%20Edition.pdf I wish them luck. It's a great challange and it will benefit a lot of people if they manage to pull it off.
Secret team? Not if we're posting about it.
The problem line is [oneish integerValue], which returns zero, and the rest of your code is just trying to obfuscate this. This is because NSDecimalNumber doesn't overrider integerValue, so it returns the inherited implementation, which returns zero. This is unexpected, but not undocumented. See the Subclassing Notes at:
https://developer.apple.com/re...
I'll note that in Swift, integerValue no longer exists, having been folded into intValue, which gives the expected result of one (just like intValue in Objective-C).
If apple brings any subscription device with iPhone8 price and try to milk the sugar of diabetic patiens for years to fill its coffers..i better die early with diabetes.
Why aren't they putting their money into researching a cure, rather than looking to profit off the disease.
Seems to be a lot of corporate interest out there in not curing this disease, its such a cash cow for the health industry.
As a type 2 diabetic even glucose meters can be problematic in accuracy even going from one location to another. Sweat and temperature can affect the results. Some of these have been tried and failed before because the accuracy cannot be guaranteed from person to person. Would like to believe Apple has some magic left, but clearly monitoring blood glucose by way of optics is rather unreliable. At best you could be looking at focusing on low blood glucose as a warning system.
But as a monitoring system in general I have my doubts.
2+2=5 for sufficiently high values of 2.
And/or sufficiently low values of 5.
For more information, contact the newly-formed US Department of Math, c/o KellyAnne Conway, Washington DC and get the facts.
It falls in line with apples mantra of "profits before people"
Just like with the FCC, anything goes with the FDA. You just have to know the right people, and be a pro-feminist ideologue.
Both the sick and the greedy fall in line with Douglas Adams' quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "People are a problem."
#DeleteFacebook
just that, they HAD a secret team, now they just have a team working on it.
carry on
What do you think about that one: http://www.integrity-app.com/t... It is now also officially approved in Europe ...
I have may parients on this and they like it ... the only problem is the size of the machine ... but I guess it will get smaller with time ...
Remote monitoring of conditions like diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure, etc. are a great use for smartphones. We'll see more of it to allow rapid intervention when something gets out of line.
The problem line is [oneish integerValue], which returns zero, and the rest of your code is just trying to obfuscate this.
Congratulations, you're the first (across three different comment threads) to point that out (though some of the trolls were entertaining).
This is unexpected, but not undocumented. See the Subclassing Notes at:
https://developer.apple.com/re...
I'll note that in Swift, integerValue no longer exists, having been folded into intValue, which gives the expected result of one (just like intValue in Objective-C).
Looks more like a 64-bit issue.
Note that if you use one fewer significant digit (e.g. @"1.111111111111111111" instead of @"1.1111111111111111111") the code works properly. That crosses the threshold where 64-bit integers overflow, which suggests a problem with the conversion used in integerValue. The 32-bit intValue always works properly, as does integerValue on 32-bit systems (where NSInteger is 32-bit, like a regular int).