Giving Up The Needle

Drawing blood for diabetic tests will soon become a thing of the past with these non-invasive devices.

- Pancham Bhardwaj

Diabetes is a volatile disease that requires constant monitoring and treatment. Most patients would agree that more so because of the symptoms or side effects, it is the constant monitoring that is the most relentless and undesirable part of suffering from this ailment. This is due to the fact that the method of monitoring your blood glucose is still archaic and involves drawing blood every single time. The process is not only time consuming and painful, but also adds to the medical expenses, since you have to keep buying new test strips every few weeks.

These test strips make up an industry of their own, as each manufacturer of diabetic devices ensure that you only buy their particular brand of test strips, essentially turning diabetic patients into perennial cash cows. Even if you have medical insurance, it is not necessary that you will get help paying for them, since each manufacturer has to individually enrol with various services. This may not even be an option depending on where you live and what kind of treatment plan you are on, since each country has its own set of medical laws and regulatory requirements.

Thankfully, in recent years, few companies and a handful of startups have begun working on solving this problem with the help of technology. Even though each company has its own approach to implementing the test, the collective aim has been to make diabetic tests devices reusable as well as non-invasive in nature. This means replacing the use of blood based glucose tests with other equally viable options, such as tear testing, optical monitoring as well as implanting long term devices inside the body for automated and scheduled testing.