CES 2026: When Diabetes Technology Becomes Consumer Technology

Jan 15, 2026

CES is the world’s largest consumer electronics show. Early January. Las Vegas.

This year: 148,000+ attendees, 4,100 exhibitors, and a familiar atmosphere of optimism where technology is always about to change everything.

For healthcare professionals, CES is not about gadgets. It’s about the direction of travel.

And CES 2026 made one thing unmistakably clear:

Diabetes technology—especially CGM—is no longer positioning itself as medical infrastructure.

It is positioning itself as consumer intelligence.

That shift has consequences for clinical care, expectations, and our role as professionals.

Diabetes technology has crossed the consumer Rubicon

Image > YouTube @DavidMausJr

For the first time, diabetes technology was not a niche presence at CES.

It was embedded in the broader biowearables and lifestyle health narrative.

Independent reviewers picked this up immediately. The framing was telling: not disease management, but performance, awareness, and optimisation.

Glucose was no longer discussed as a pathology marker.

It was presented as a feedback signal you can learn from.

That reframing has consequences.

Abbott and Dexcom: different language, same destination

Despite different branding, Abbott and Dexcom are pursuing the same strategic shift.

Both are actively repositioning CGM from: a medical device for people with diabetes to a general-purpose metabolic insight tool for a broad population

Abbott: closing the behaviour loop

Image: An example of Libre Assist predicting how a poke bowl might impact your blood sugar.

Abbott framed glucose as an actionable signal.

With Libre Assist:

Meals are photographed
Glucose impact is predicted
Users receive real-time suggestions to blunt spikes

The message is explicit: glucose is something you interact with, not something that happens to you.

Their messaging—reinforced by consumer ambassadors and partnerships like Weight Watchers & Withings—positions glucose as a daily optimisation signal inside lifestyle health.

Serena Williams took the stage to discuss her use of Lingo—not as a medical device, but as a learning tool. Her framing was simple and effective: “Health is number one.”

> Link to CES session with Serena Williams

Dexcom: normalising glucose as a health signal

Image > new Stelo interface

Dexcom is expanding beyond diabetes into general health and wellness.

> Link to CES interview with Dexcom CEO Jake Leach

The reframing is deliberate:

Not a disease marker
Not a therapy trigger
But a foundational physiological signal

Glucose is positioned alongside sleep, activity, and heart rate.

Stelo fits this strategy precisely: integration with Oura, smart food logging, and visualisation of glucose “load” from a photographed meal.

Different tone. Same direction.

CGM becomes consumer-owned, longevity-adjacent infrastructure.

What this means for healthcare professionals

This shift has real clinical consequences—whether we engage or not.

CGM will often come before diagnosis
Patients will arrive with weeks or months of self-collected CGM data, outside reimbursement and without clinical framing.
The question shifts from “Should we start CGM?” to “How do we interpret the data they already have?”
Consultations move upstream
When patients already understand patterns and variability, our role shifts from education to interpretation: deciding which signals matter, which don’t, and what to act on.
More false certainty—and more clinical value
Consumer CGM and AI insights will sometimes mislead. That’s not failure; that’s where clinicians add value—by correcting, contextualising, and preventing overreaction.
Diabetes care becomes metabolic care
As glucose becomes a mainstream health metric, boundaries between diabetes, obesity, and cardiometabolic prevention continue to blur. This is not loss of expertise, but expansion of relevance.

Insulet: “Liveable Technology” enters CES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V11bVIlQAI

CES 2026 marked Insulet’s first appearance.

Omnipod 5 was framed not as pump therapy or AID, but as Liveable Technology—a lifestyle enabler for all insulin-treated people (type 1 and type 2).

Insulet reiterated that a fully closed-loop system for type 2 diabetes remains in development, with timelines pointing beyond 2028.

> Link to CES session from Insulet

Their framing echoed two broader societal trends:

The "self-care healthcare" movement: people actively taking control of their health
The "measure-me" movement: continuous tracking as a default behaviour

The implicit message to clinicians was clear:

Data availability is no longer the problem.

Meaning and guidance are.

The bigger signal: diabetes care is merging with everyday health

Across companies, the same pattern emerged:

Less emphasis on disease labels
More emphasis on continuous feedback loops
Glucose positioned alongside sleep, activity, stress, and nutrition

This is not about replacing care teams.

It is about raising baseline health literacy before the consultation begins.

ChatGPT Health: the quiet structural shift

Away from the exhibit halls, one of the most consequential announcements last week came from OpenAI.

This formalises what is already happening: both patients and clinicians are using LLMs for health-related reasoning.

Health is already one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT.

OpenAI is now adding guardrails:

a separate health data space,
no training on health conversations,
data isolation and encryption
and user-controlled deletion.

At launch:

Available in the US and Singapore
Not available in the Europe, Switzerland, or the UK
Web and iOS only (Android will follow later)
Integration with Apple Health
EMR connections via b.well and select US apps (MyFitnessPal, Weight Watchers, Peloton, Functions, AllTrails & Instacart)