Google Has Patented A New Wearable That Can Draw Blood

The new wearable from Google may assist diabetics easily monitor their blood glucose levels and include a variety of different health-centric features. The Mountain View-based search giant has filed a patent for a wearable that enables it to take samples of your blood with out using any needles.

The patent in question reveals that the gadget first sends an “abrupt surge” of gas into a cylindrical container which consists of a micro-particle, then punctures the skin to acquire a small drop of blood. “Such an application might be used to draw a small quantity of blood, for instance, for a glucose check,” the patent explains. The patent was granted on 3rd December 2015, and was applied for back in May 2014.

At the moment, diabetics are required to use a finger prick to draw blood & use a glucose meter multiple times a day to measure their blood sugar levels. A number of handsets in the current pool of Android Wear smartwatches and other health trackers provide the ability to observe heart rate and in addition sport sensors for monitoring fitness, nevertheless, the addition of a “needle-free blood draw” capability may significantly improve the usability of the gadget.

“Consequently, very small diameter needles or lancets (the needle in a glucose testing device) may be considered advantageous for purposes at least of comfort of the patient. In practice, small piercing components might be built-in in small, hand-portable implements that can be utilized by a healthcare practitioner, or even the patient, to collect a small sample of the affected person’s blood and provide it to a lab for testing.”

Google, as you can imagine, has remained tight lipped in regards to the matter, and has offered the following boilerplate statement (via The Verge). “We hold patents on a wide range of concepts – a few of these concepts later mature into actual services or products, some do not. Potential product announcements shouldn’t necessarily be inferred from our patents.”

The patent ties in nicely with a recent report citing the ex-Head of Life Sciences at Google, Andy Conrad (now heading of the newly-formed Life Sciences company at Alphabet), to say Google is working on a medical-grade wristband. At the time, Conrad mentioned the wearable like others available in the market would have the ability to measure heart rate and pulse of the person, however with minute-to-minute updates. Moreover, the gadget would also measure skin temperature on a minute-by-minute basis and will also deliver external data such as sun exposure. These attributes make it more suited to health-monitoring than common wearables available in the market. “Our intended use is for this to become a medical device that is prescribed to patients or used for clinical trials,” Conrad stated.