Noninvasive Hypoglycemia Detection in People With Diabetes Using Smartwatch Data

To develop a noninvasive hypoglycemia detection approach using smartwatch data.

We prospectively collected data from two wrist-worn wearables (Garmin vivoactive 4S, Empatica E4) and continuous glucose monitoring values in adults with diabetes on insulin treatment. Using these data, we developed a machine learning (ML) approach to detect hypoglycemia (<3.9 mmol/L) noninvasively in unseen individuals and solely based on wearable data.

Twenty-two individuals were included in the final analysis (age 54.5 ± 15.2 years, HbA_1c 6.9 ± 0.6%, 16 males). Hypoglycemia was detected with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.76 ± 0.07 solely based on wearable data. Feature analysis revealed that the ML model associated increased heart rate, decreased heart rate variability, and increased tonic electrodermal activity with hypoglycemia.

Our approach may allow for noninvasive hypoglycemia detection using wearables in people with diabetes and thus complement existing methods for hypoglycemia detection and warning.