Apple Watch glucose tracker gets Apple Silicon executive as project lead

Glucose monitoring is the holy grail of wearable technology that Apple has been chasing for years. If it becomes a reality, it could become an essential product for people with diabetes.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple has assigned a new head to the glucose monitoring project after months without a dedicated executive in place. Tim Millet, Apple's vice president of platform architecture, has been tapped for the position.

This team is referred to internally as the Exploratory Design Group, which works on moonshot projects at Apple. The previous team lead was scientist Bill Athas, who died at the end of 2022.

The report says Apple has been developing blood glucose technology since 2011. The technology would use a range of sensors to determine glucose levels with lasers and machine learning algorithms.

Since this technology will rely heavily on miniaturization and advanced chipset design, Tim Millet is seen as a perfect fit for the team. He oversaw the Apple Silicon transition from Intel to M-series processors and has been with Apple for about 19 years.

It may be many years before the Apple Watch or other wearables will introduce non-invasive glucose monitoring. However, if Apple can get ahead of the competition with this technology, it would make the Apple Watch even more of a must-have health product.