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Simplifying Blood Glucose Testing

Glucometers are obviously one among the best inventions of mankind. It came at a time when Blood Glucose testing took some couple of days. Hospitals and doctors have been resisting the use of Glucometers for quite sometime until they realized its importance. Benefits of Glucometers are several. But one big concern of Glucometer is accuracy. There are various factors that affect accuracy of Glucometers and one such is the size and quality of Blood Samples. Anyhow all we can expect is future Glucometers would provide 100 per cent results against lab tests.  Glucometer is a portable device that determines the Glucose concentration in your blood. This is an approximate measure. In hospitals nowadays, it is used for elaborate quality control records. 

The advent of Glucometers has ensured one checks Blood Sugar levels in his/her body. There are various types, used in different forms. Since 1980s, the goal of managing  Diabetes was to have normal levels of Blood Glucose levels and thanks to Glucometers that have led many achieve their goals.

Early Innovations
Ames Reflectance was the first one who came up with a plan to test Blood Glucose levels through Dextrostix, which are thin strips of papers in 1965. To these thin paper strips one would add a drop of  is/ her blood pricked at the finger tip.  Blood is allowed to stay in the paper for a minute and then washed. Then the colour of the paper strip is compared to the colour chart placed in the lab. This was the first innovation in testing Blood Glucose levels.  These were predominantly used by doctors. Realizing the difficulty of Dextrostix, Anton Clemens came up with the first Glucometer that was similar to the use of Dextrostix. A beam of light was glowed at the blue coloured spot and that was a meter, which read reflected light.  The first glucometer was launched in November 1981 by Bayer and Roche (makers of AccuChek). Anyhow, home glucose monitoring was sharply criticized by hospitals, laboratories and doctors.

Way Ahead
The US based Cygnus Inc. has come up with GlucoWatch G2 Biographer approved by the US FDA. The device uses electric fields to draw body fluids for testing. But one has to dry sweat before testing as the individual would be at the risk of getting an electric shock, which has kept the product way from the market. Currently, continuous glucose monitoring system is ruling the market. The same is paving way for a continuous glucose monitoring sensor in a decade time.  Also integrating glucometers with mobile phones are already on the cards. Telcare Inc. is conducting clinical trials in cellular data communications technology that enabled the development of glucometers and directly integrated cellular data transmission capability, enabling the user to both transmit glucose data to the medical caregiver and receive direct guidance from the caregiver on the screen of the glucometer.  

Apart from that Insulin Pumps and wristop controllers are also on discussions.  Another recent development in this is the contact lenses prototype announced by Google in 2014. These monitor glucose levels and alert users when glucose levels cross certain thresholds.

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