On show at the London Marathon expo last week, Abbott is introducing Lingo across the UK. Originally unveiled by Abbott in January 2024, the new biowearable device and app are designed to help people improve their overall health and wellbeing.
Lingo tracks glucose spikes and dips in real time. It also provides personalised insights and customised coaching. According to Abbott, this helps users implement healthier habits and pursue better sleep, mood, focus, energy and fewer unpredictable cravings.
The unveiling of Lingo comes after the closure of Supersapiens, which utilised the Abbott Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor. The timing also follows new research commissioned by Abbott. This revealed that:
- The vast majority (91%) of Brits currently lack energy;
- Over one-fifth (22%) reported that they feel exhausted at the start of the year; and
- While many people have experienced a sugar rush and crash, nearly a third of the nation (30%) are not aware that these glucose spikes and dips impact their metabolism and can affect mental and physical wellbeing.
“Our mood, weight, energy levels and ability to focus are all connected to our individual glucose levels which rise and fall in response to the food we eat, hours of sleep, regular exercise, and even life’s daily stresses,” said Lily Soutter, nutritionist in Abbott’s Lingo business.
“Improving your metabolic health by tracking your glucose levels over a meaningful period of time can motivate you to implement changes to better manage those spikes and dips, ultimately benefiting your health and well-being.”
Following more than two decades of research conducted by Abbott’s team of scientists on continuous glucose monitors, and several months of user testing and feedback in the UK to enhance the app, Lingo has been designed to empower people to be in tune with their body’s glucose levels. This should help create meaningful and healthier habits and, in turn, retrain metabolisms.
“Biowearables are the next evolution of personalised health tech, and Lingo is designed to help give people the power to see inside their bodies and take control of their health, and with real-time coaching, make sustainable changes,” said Sarah Tan, Europe General Manager of Abbott’s Lingo business.
“We’ve combined Abbott’s number one glucose-sensing technology with our personalised coaching app to help guide people to make changes that improve sleep, energy, mood, focus and hunger cravings.”
Lingo coaching starts with a baseline reading of an individual’s glucose through the small Lingo biosensor which is applied to the back of the upper arm and sends data in real time directly to the Lingo app on a smart phone via Bluetooth.
Through algorithms, Lingo learns how an individual’s diet, exercise and sleep can affect their glucose levels and provides recommended actions when their body is experiencing a glucose spike or dip. The coaching features then focus on personalised goals and areas for improvement, with recommended challenges that are designed with long-term benefits in mind.
Lingo app key features:
- Lingo Graph: incorporates spike colourisation indicating when a person is experiencing a glucose spike (purple) and when their glucose is steady (blue). Lingo coaching provides relevant prompts when spikes are detected to help improve overall habits.
- Lingo Count: aims to take the guesswork out of tracking glucose, with real-time insights and actionable guidance – based on an individual’s patterns. The algorithm identifies significant glucose spikes and assigns them Lingo Count daily targets, which evolve as an individual makes progress, providing advice along the way.
- All About You: users see insights and trends over time while learning what causes the highest and lowest Lingo Count and receive guidance on how to maximize diet, sleep and exercise.
- Lingo Challenges: provides new challenges based on a person’s individual goals and derived from Five Lingo Fundamentals, based on science & nutrition research and designed to create and motivate sustainable changes. These are: prioritise protein, don’t fear fat, go with green, savoury not sweet, move more.
Lingo is currently available to purchase in the UK:
- Two-week Discovery Pack: £89 for a single sensor (worn for 14 days) and access to personalised insights through the coaching app. This is for those who want to try Lingo before they sign-up for a longer-term program.
- The Lingo Program: £300 includes four sensors (each worn for 14 days), with unlimited access to the coaching app which combines science with personalised insights.
