The future of diabetes self-care
Needle-Free Diabetes Care is a path-breaking technology currently under development. The best options available today for automating most of the complicated daily process of blood sugar management are continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps. However, they don’t completely remove the need for skin pricks and shots.
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The new skin in the game is a technology being developed by Echo Therapeutics (Philadelphia, USA). It would replace the poke with a patch. A transdermal biosensor that reads blood analytes through the skin without drawing blood is what the company is aiming for.
The technology puts the patient’s blood chemistry within signal range of a patch-borne biosensor with the help of a handheld electric-toothbrush like device that removes just enough top-layer skin cells. The sensor collects one reading per minute and sends the data wirelessly to a remote monitor. When levels go out of the patient’s optimal range, this triggers audible alarms thus tracking glucose levels over time.
There are other start-ups working in the same space as GlucoSense, a spinout of the University of Leeds funded by NetScientific is developing a non-invasive device based on photonics technology. Another Dutch start-up called NovioSenseis working on an implantable glucose sensor that uses tear fluid to measure glucose levels.
