Although it is very important to do so, one of the biggest hassles of having diabetes is sticking your finger and testing your blood sugar regularly. Not only does it hurt at times, the test strips can be expensive. However, there are a number of new technologies currently under development that seek to make finger-sticks a thing of the past.
Amy Tenderich, who runs the diabetes blog Diabetes Mine, wrote about a new non-invasive blood glucose monitoring device she saw at the recent Diabetes Technology Society meeting in San Francisco. It is called GlucoTrack and is made by a company called Integrity Applications. Essentially the device looks like an mp3-player with a small wire attached to it. The wire has a clamp at the end that is placed on the user’s earlobe. The device uses ultrasonic, conductivity and heat capacity technologies to measure the amount of sugar in the blood.
However, there is one major drawback so far that the company is working to improve: accuracy. The company claims it is more accurate than other non-invasive meters, but not as accurate as testing the blood-sugar levels by sticking your finger.
The device, which has been approved to go to market in Europe in the middle of next year and expects FDA approval the following year, is made for use by both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics. However, Tenderich says the device may catch on easier with Type 2 diabetics because the majority of people with that form of the disease do not take insulin. People with diabetes that take insulin rely heavily on their blood sugar test results in order to take the proper dosage of insulin. Another benefit of the new device is that it eliminates the need for pricey test strips, according to the account on Diabetes Mine.
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For all of us who test and test and test and….
this would be a good thing.
Make it happen … soon.