Scientists built a smart ring that analyzes sweat to measure blood glucose and more

TL;DR Wearables currently struggle to gather data about body metrics that are traditionally measured via blood analysis. A new technique shows how a smart ring could overcome that limitation by analyzing sweat. While there are big hurdles to get over before anything like this is commercially viable, the tech sounds promising.

Wearable tech tends to improve along two different fronts — sometimes at the same time. We have devices like smart glasses or watches that try to bring smartphone-like processing, performance, and connectivity to a wearable form factor. But then there are trackers like the Fitbit Air or smart rings that are all about advanced sensor packages, gathering as much data about our bodies as they can.

On that latter front, one of the biggest advancements we’ve been waiting for is a way to measure things like glucose levels non-invasively. And now some scientists are sharing an interesting new way to go about just that. While having access to data like your glucose level can be extremely useful, measuring it tends to require needles to get at your blood — not something many of us would choose outside of medical necessity.

But in a new paper published in Nature , a group of scientists outline how they designed a smart ring that measures glucose, lactate, and even alcohol levels just by non-invasively analyzing the wearer’s sweat (via CNET ).