New Watch Design Can Track Alcohol, Glucose & Blood Pressure

A brand new watch design is capable of tracking alcohol levels, glucose trends and blood pressure.

The biomarkers will give unprecedented health tracking data, and the wearable will also be able to track core body temperature, body hydration and lactate.

As of yet, it’s just a prototype design from a supplier of Apple Watch called Rockley Photonics, who describe the technology as a “clinic on a wrist”.

The next generation of the Apple Watch won’t be hosting the new design though.

Rockley say it will “initially be used in a sequence of in-house human studies in the coming months” before it can be built into a device to be sold to the public.

The lactate measure could be of particular interest to athletes, as the body’s ability to use lactate as a fuel is a key indicator of its fitness and performance levels.

At present, the only reliable way to measure lactate is to take a blood sample. But if technology could give us a much less invasive way of measuring lactate trends, it could make the data much easier to obtain.

Of course, we know nothing of the accuracy of the new tech yet and most tracking devices take years and many models to perfect, but it’s a huge leap forward for fitness fanatics who love data.

The reason the design is able to measure a range of new biomarkers is that it uses infrared spectrophotometers which are able to probe below the skin.

This allows for more analysis than the green and red LED arrays used by most current wearables which simply reflect light from arteries.