Quantum Operation Inc.
Quantum Operation gave a sample of its data compared to that made by a commercial fingerprint monitor, the FreeStyle Libre. And at this point, there seems to be a noticeable variation between the portable and the Libre. For the time being, this may be an agreement for those who rely on accurate blood glucose measurements to determine their insulin dose.
Non-invasive glucose monitoring is a holy grail for the medical industry as well as the major portable brands. After all, one in 10 Americans is diabetic, and the figure is likely to rise as the obesity crisis continues. To maintain their health, diabetics today need to do regular blood tests with finger stimuli or carry an implanted glucose monitor. In the last five years, companies like Dexcom and Abbott have even found ways to connect these monitors to smart watches to make detection easier.
The portable industry, of course, was looking for an easier and less intrusive way to do this to steal from that lunch. Unfortunately, no company has been able to demonstrate a working version of this technology successfully, at least not to a commercial standard. In 2017, one company – PKVitality – came to CES with a watch that had a series of 0.5 mm needles on the back of the watch that collected interstitial fluid from your skin. But that hardly counts as intrusive.
Apple is reportedly working on a blood sugar monitoring platform, even before Steve Jobs died. Rumors surfaced in 2017 that the company had a dedicated lab to monitor ways to monitor blood sugar through a portable monitor. In 2018, AppleInsider found a patent filed by the company, related to the use of absorption spectroscopy to monitor blood glucose levels.
This secret team was apparently reinforced by the former employees of C8 MediSensors, a company that could not accomplish this task at the beginning of the last decade. It raised $ 60 million in investments from companies like GE, but was unable to create a working product until it closed in early 2013. MIT Tech Review a 2014 profile of the company said that C8 simply could not solve the variability problem – where the readings differ from person to person – until it had no more money.
A technique called Raman Spectroscopy has seen some promise in the example above and in other projects. In 2018, a group of researchers at the University of Missouri and MIT found that a laser, through an optical fiber cable, could be used to monitor glucose when pressed against the wrist. At the time, researchers said the system could provide readings comparable to a finger prick test.
There is still a long way to go before we can see this kind of technology in a working product, even longer before it is in one we want to buy. But if Quantum can show that the pitfalls that hit some of its competitors have been avoided and that the technology is accurate enough, it can be quite exciting.
Because it’s a virtual CES, it’s obviously even harder to take the company’s fantastic demands at face value. If we were in person at the show, we would be able to test the device ourselves and talk to the founders face to face. It is also noteworthy that there is no peer-reviewed or otherwise externally validated science to support this particular technology and its application. We can not yet seriously judge this technology, other than to say that if Quantum Operation can satisfy its claims, we may be at the point of a very exciting time for portable products.