Dexcom and Fitbit are teaming up to develop and market products to help people manage their diabetes, starting with integrating Dexcom's continuous glucose monitoring data into one of Fitbit’s smartwatches.
Specifically, patients who view their Dexcom CGM data on a smartphone may now see it on Fitbit’s latest smartwatch. The Fitbit Ionic offers a blood oxygen saturation sensor and improved heart rate tracking in addition to its core features, such as sleep tracking.
“The collaboration between Dexcom and Fitbit is an important step in providing useful information to people with diabetes that is both convenient and discreet,” said Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer, in a statement. “We believe that providing Dexcom CGM data on Fitbit Ionic, and making that experience available to users of both Android and iOS devices, will have a positive impact on the way people manage their diabetes.”
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The companies plan to roll out the integration in 2018 and will continue to work on other offerings to help people better manage their diabetes.
Dexcom markets the only FDA-approved therapeutic CGM system, meaning that data from the device may be used to make treatment decisions. Other CGMs are approved as adjunctive devices, and so must be used alongside data from other devices.
Dexcom has been ramping up its partnerships lately--most recently, it signed a deal with Ascensia to provide the latter’s blood glucose meter as part of its CGM system. And in June, Glooko and Dexcom expanded their partnership to allow Dexcom CGM data to sync with Glooko’s diabetes management platform via the cloud.