Diabetes is a life-threatening condition throughout the world, where more than 100 million adults live with pre-diabetes or diabetes problem and around 1 in 4 of them remain undiagnosed. Early detection could surely aid in the prevention of diabetes-related issues well in advance before it becomes life threating.

A recent clinical study by Cardiogram has reported that the Apple Watch can assess diabetes with an 85 percent accuracy in patients who have been diagnosed with diabetes. By using the integrated heart rate sensor, Cardiogram along with UCSF detected around 462 diabetes cases from a total of 14,000 Apple Watch users. This same type of heart rate sensor is also found in other smartwatches and fitness bands, including those using Google's Android Wear platform.

This Cardiogram work was based on Framingham Heart Study 2015, where the resting and variable heart rate significantly predicted hypertension and diabetes. This prototype helped the cardiogram research team to use the Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor for accurate diabetes predictions.

In past research, the Cardiogram team used the Apple Watch to assess abnormal heart rhythms with 97% accuracy, hypertension with 82% accuracy and sleep apnea with a 90% accuracy rate, by pairing with an AI-based algorithm.