A report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg sheds new gentle on considered one of Apple’s most secretive rumored initiatives: non-invasive glucose monitoring for the Apple Watch. In truth, the report says that the undertaking has been researched inside Apple for over 12 years–again to the top of the Steve Jobs period and years earlier than the discharge of the primary Apple Watch.

A number of corporations and educational establishments have been engaged on methods to reliably measure blood glucose ranges with out piercing the pores and skin for many years. Over half a billion adults on the planet have diabetes, and the power to measure blood sugar with out breaking the pores and skin can be life-changing for them. What’s extra, the measurement may present helpful knowledge for these seeking to enhance their well being and health, even when they don’t have diabetes.

The undertaking apparently has “lots of” of engineers engaged on it as a part of the Exploratory Design Group (XDG) inside Apple, the place it merely goes by the undertaking designation “E5.” Previous to being part of that group, the undertaking was run out of a secret Apple-owned startup referred to as Avolonte Well being LLC that appeared to don’t have anything to do with Apple. The primary work started again in 2010 when Apple acquired a startup referred to as RareLight.

Apple’s strategy makes use of a course of referred to as optical absorption spectroscopy. Lasers emit particular wavelengths of sunshine into the pores and skin in areas the place substances leak out of capillaries. The sunshine is absorbed by glucose and mirrored again to the sensor, the place an algorithm then determines an individual’s blood glucose stage.

In keeping with the Bloomberg report, Apple has examined the system on lots of of people over the previous decade, together with these with out diabetes, prediabetics, and diabetics, evaluating its outcomes to conventional blood-drawing strategies. After a number of current “main milestones,” the undertaking is now thought of to be at a “proof of idea” stage.

Don’t anticipate the Apple Watch Collection 9 to characteristic this expertise when it’s launched within the fall–and even subsequent 12 months’s rumored Apple Watch X. Previous units have sat atop a desk, and the researchers at the moment are engaged on a smaller model roughly the dimensions of an iPhone that may very well be strapped to an individual’s bicep. It nonetheless has a protracted technique to go earlier than it’s shrunk all the way down to a stage the place it may very well be included into the Apple Watch.