Apple's Health app may not provide accurate blood sugar measurements

A new software update for Apple's Health app is designed to fix accuracy problems in the app's tracking of blood glucose levels.

The app allows users to manually enter values obtained from external tracking devices, but these devices use different units of measurement to track blood sugar depending on the geographic region of the world they're sold. For instance, the United States uses mg/dL (milligrams per decilitre), while the UK and Australia use mmol/L (millimoles per litre).

The app supports both measurement units, but users can only view their values in mg/dL, which could cause problems for users that input values in the mmol/L format.

"To prevent confusion in countries where mmol/L is commonly used, we'll soon release a software update that will temporarily remove the ability to manually enter and view blood glucose values in the Health app while we work on an update to support both units of measurement," the company wrote on their website.

Disabled elements

Before the updates, Apple says they will disable some elements of the Health app that will make previously entered data no longer viewable. The information isn't deleted, however, and other apps used in conjunction with the data will still have access to the blood sugar values that were entered.

Since blood glucose monitoring is a critical part of managing diabetes, Health app users may want to consider using other tracking systems until the app updates are complete.

Source: CNET