But there are 29.1 Million Americans with diabetes (9.3% of the population.) According to a paper in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) as many as 50% of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. 71,000 people die annually due to complications from it, more than double that of US car deaths.

And the only great solution before Dexcom’s partnership with Apple was a hacked together solution using a Pebble watch and a continuous glucose monitor.

That’s what the watch is: a flexible platform that can be many things to many people, whether it’s diabetes, using AI to predict the onset of Asthma, feed information to doctors about epilepsy, and more. 100s of Millions is where the sum of these uses lead it. LTE helps get it there.

Apple is laying the groundwork for a health product that is also a fitness product, in a way that no one has bothered to address health before. By using the watch to support research, more people then ever before have participated in medical research, which in turn will allow the watch to monitor health outside of the research study setting. Focusing on fitness plays a role in contributing to health, where other wearables aren’t taking as wide a holistic view.

The spark of genius is helping people become more fit today, helping them monitor their health to prevent complications and death, and enabling research that formerly wouldn’t have had as many participants. Helping people today, contributing to saving lives, and advancing research. Genius. Oh, and it has begins to take advantage of machine learning for notifications and events.

LTE means being able to have that AI out in the world, that health genius, without having to be reliant on the phone. It also means doing smart things to sleep the modem when in the proximity of the phone, so that you can get acceptably long battery life. You’re not going to get a full day if you’re streaming music to the watch while running a marathon, but that’s not the point. The point is to make it a first class device rather than an accessory to the phone.

This also has knock on effects for other regions in the world. Currently, there are people in India whispering into the voice assistants in their phones to use internet – checking train schedules, downloading movies, messaging family, and checking Babajob for opportunities. The interface works by voice. When you don’t need a phone, and the watch does it all by voice as well, what’s the point in acquiring a phone?

There are many workplaces where cameras are not allowed and others where hands free communication is useful. IMO the workplace, apart from a few use cases like fitness, will drive wearables adoption for the next few years.

https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/21/interview-dexcom-ceo-apple-watch-corebluetooth-cgm-diabetes/