Abbott's new injectable sensors get under your skin

Speaker 1: Here at CNET, we review and report on a lot of wearables that track stats like heart rate steps and blood oxygen levels. But the next big thing in health trackers might just be devices that dive deeper and literally get under your skin to measure everything from alcohol to glucose levels. I'm talking about Abbots, just announced line of bio wearable sensors called lingo, these trackers attached to your body and send continuous [00:00:30] updates right to your phone. Speaker 1: You may know Abbot as the company that produces is at home COVID tests, but I've known them for something entirely different. They're continuous glucose monitors or CGMs, which are used to track glucose levels. For those like me to help manage their diabetes. I'm Justin tech and I was diagnosed with tight one diabetes back in may, and [00:01:00] a CGM has been a life changer for me, being able to know how much sugars in my body helps me decide how much and when to either eat or inject insulin, to keep my blood sugar in target range. Today, I wanna take a look at this. This is last night. I learned that I'll probably give myself half that dose now to be very clear, CGMs are medical devices, which in the us means they're approved by the FDA through [00:01:30] a long process. These new sensors from Abbot are not medical devices or CGMs. Speaker 1: Abbot says lingo. Bio wearables are not intended for medical use, but they will, will need to go through the appropriate regulatory process. Back in 2020, Abbot released the Libre sense in Europe, it's designed just for athletes to monitor their glucose levels, to help them improve their workouts. At this year's CES Abbot [00:02:00] went a step further and debuted go a line of trackers that attach to your body to measure not only glucose levels, but also key tones, lactate and alcohol. Each of the four sensors track. One of those indicators I spoke with mark to, from Abbot to find out all the ways this tracker can be used to help consumers decode their body signals and, and find out when we can expect to see these on the market. First, let's hear from mark about what a [00:02:30] bio wearable sensor is and how it works. Speaker 2: When we talk about a biosensor or a bio wearable, it's a sensor that measures in analyte in the body. So it's worn on the back of the arm for 14, and there's a small filament that's inserted just below the skin. It's about the size of three human hairs and it measures in Aite in the body. Um, translates that into an electrical signal. It sends that wirelessly from the sensor, right to your smartphone. So it can display [00:03:00] your for glucose, for example, your glucose, reading your history of glucose and a trend arrow, which shows you what direction your glucose is heading. And of course, we'll present that data differently for each of the different analytes in the Abbot lingo line of, of, of consumer products as well. Speaker 1: Next, I spoke to mark about how each of these lingo bio wearables can be useful and who they would be most useful to. So let's start with the key tone sensor, which is slated to release in Europe later this year, keytones are the byproducts of the breakdown of [00:03:30] fatty acids. So for people looking to lose weight, this is an important metric. Speaker 2: There's a growing body of scientific evidence about the, uh, effectiveness of a ketogenic diet for weight loss. And this device is designed to help people on that journey, um, through, um, ketogenic diets. So it helps you understand when you're achieving keto, which is the target for somebody in a ketogenic diet when they're, they're burning fat and generating these keto bodies that are sensors will be able to measure continuously and let people know that they are achieving those [00:04:00] keto targets and act, and actually, um, you know, burning fat and, and Speaker 1: Losing weight now onto glucose monitoring. As someone with type one diabetes, I already use one of these and it's become an incredibly important if not necessary device to control and manage my diabetes. But with lingo, people will be able to track the, their glucose levels and understand how they affect their energy levels. And more, Speaker 2: We see the, the use in, uh, glucose wellness for the young mother of, uh, of, [00:04:30] of two kids who, who knows she's feeling sluggish when her blood glucose goes low and now she can have new insight into her body and what her glucose levels are doing and how she feels and get a better night's sleep and feel better and have better mental clarity that we know you can achieve when you have your glucose, um, better under control, but again, different products for people with diabetes than for people using it for, um, for health and wellness. Next Speaker 1: There's the lactic acid sensor, which measures lactic [00:05:00] acid in your body. As someone who is really into working out and high interval training, I would love more insight into my lactic acid. This sensor is intended for athletes and is being designed to measure lactic buildup during exercise, which can be used as an indicator of athletic performance to assist in optimizing training and recovery. Now this next one may have some of you a little bit on edge, and that's a sensor they're working on that can track alcohol in your system. [00:05:30] So I asked exactly who is this for? And how does it fit into health and wellness? We Speaker 2: Are still working through the, the particular use cases for the product, but we really see it as, um, again, part of a, a health and wellness, this, uh, approach to really give you an understanding of, you know, how much alcohol that you're consuming and, uh, to be able to, um, get better visibility into, um, what your body's actually doing and, and to be able to understand that better and have, uh, you know, better confidence and understanding. We see an avenue [00:06:00] with safety and how, um, you know, potentially the sensor could talk to your car and let you know, um, you know, is it, is it all right to, um, to drive at that point? Or do you need to, um, you need to remove yourself from that situation. Speaker 1: I think a sensor like this is really intriguing. I would love to understand how much alcohol I'm drinking and then kind of be able to log how I felt the next day and understand how a certain amount of alcohol affects me and my body. But I also see this alternative [00:06:30] universe where law enforcement gets involved and P people who get a DUI or get house arrest. And they're given these devices to put on their arms and track how much alcohol is in their system. Well, that's, uh, that's an interesting thing that doesn't seem that far off these days. Most importantly, when can we expect these? Well, like I said earlier, the key tone sensor is arriving in Europe later this year. And the Libra a sense which senses glucose is already available [00:07:00] in eight countries in Europe, as for the other sensors, there's no word on release dates or when we'll see them in the us, but this is exciting tech. Speaker 1: And it seems to be the next step in fitness tracking and how we measure our athletic performance or a really great tool for big brother to get his hands on. And with that comes more questions of privacy and data concerns like who owns this bio data. Anyway, what [00:07:30] do you think about these bio wearable sensors? Would you wear them and what would you hope to learn from the data it's providing? I'm gonna be follow a story closely as well as producing videos on diabetes tech and the tech I use on a daily basis. So if any of that interests, you be sure to subscribe to the channel and give this video. Like if you enjoyed it to learn more about lingo, there is a link down below in the description. I'm Justin fina, and I'll take you later.