Effective glucose monitoring for an elderly diabetic

May 29, 2010 10:28 AM

Wearable glucose monitors? Do they exist and if so, are they worth it?

Are there any reputable wearable glucose monitors on the market? My non-web using diabetic father has been interested in getting one for several years but I don't know how best to inform him about them. By 'wearable' I am referring to a device that does not require blood (a needle or insulin pump); and could be worn like a watch.

I'm interested in any advice or suggestions regarding this (including better terminology for searching), or even research papers. Thank you.

posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

My wife is a Type 1 diabetic, and I'm not aware of anything like that being currently available. There is a continuous glucose monitor available that ties in to her pump, but it requires an infusion set that you have to replace every few days, so it does not fit your criteria.

There was this interesting article I saw yesterday about using tattoos and nano-particles to monitor blood glucose, but it's still in the very early stages of research.
posted by COD at 10:55 AM on May 29, 2010

The usual term used for this is non-invasive glucose monitoring. There have been a few false starts in this area, but no really successful products yet. It's a hard problem, and it will be big news if it can be solved.

It's different than continuous glucose monitors, which are also wearable, but require implanting a sensor under the skin that has to be changed every few days.
posted by FishBike at 11:04 AM on May 29, 2010

The pinprick is the easiest and quickiest way to measure BG. Stick to that for now, it's the cheapest and most reliable.
posted by >> at 12:12 PM on May 29, 2010

I've heard of bracelets but they're all prototypes and still require fingersticks to check accuracy.
posted by IndigoRain at 1:46 AM on May 30, 2010

Best answer: I'm not an expert, but I'm a researcher, and have lately been studying noninvasive health monitoring devices of various sorts. What FishBike says is correct: no truly noninvasive (meaning without penetration of skin or blood sampling of some sort) glucose monitors are available currently in the USA. However, there are some minimally-invasive ones that might be close enough to what you are looking for. Here are the devices I'm aware of:

• SEVEN Plus, from DexCom: http://www.dexcom.com/
• Guardian, from Medtronic: http://www.minimed.com/products/guardian/
• FreeStyle Navigator, from Abbott: http://www.freestylenavigator.com

Bayer recently introduced a device that uses the standard finger prick + test-strip approach, but incorporates a USB interface and computer software to manage and analyze test results. There was a Wall Street Journal article last December 2009 about it.

There are also efforts at integrating Bluetooth interfaces with glucose testing devices, for easier uploading of data.

Finally, there are some efforts at integrating continuous glucose monitoring with insulin pump mechanisms. The one I read about recently is being developed by Medtronic and received FDA approval.

Hope this helps!

(BTW, I don't work for any of the companies mentioned, nor have received any funding from any of them.)
posted by StrawberryPie at 10:25 PM on May 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks StrawberryPie, that does help.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 10:07 PM on June 4, 2010