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Comment by tpoacher | Hacker News Reader

I have a counter-story.

When I started my Phd in 2011, one professor, an absolute top player in the field and prof in a top tier university, revealed that he had patented a fully functional prototype a few years back, which allowed similar cheap non-stick measurement of glucose (i think this was on a principle similar to pulse oximetry rather than RF).

The patent was swiftly bought by a large pharmaceutical company and "buried", in order to protect sales of blood-sticks; by far the main source of profit in diabetic devices (his words).

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Doubt it. There are so many issues with any technology regarding non-invasive. Is it still accurate if the individual has a fever? etc. etc. There were at least 50 companies that tried to build such devices, some start-ups had funding in the 50-100 million USD range - and failed. Samsung abandoned it. Apple is rumored to work on it.

Also, without clinical trials you really can't claim this device is reliable. You would also have to compare to real blood glucose and not the finger prick test.

Forgive my ignorance but, isn't a finger prick measuring real blood glucose? Or are you referring to a more long term/average a1c? (Or is there something in between that I just don't know about?)

"Real" blood glucose is glucose as measured by a reference standard device, like the YSI 2500, arterial blood gas machine etc. Finger pricks are accurate to within ~15% of the real blood sugar, and reference machines like the YSI are accurate to within ~1%.

Exactly. And I doubt that this device is used in any lab, except in a clinical lab setting. I have seen it in clinical trials. Focus on the word "arterial blood", this gives you an idea. :-)

Sure, it's a very bulky device and expensive to run! But, when you're talking about 'real' blood glucose, it's the gold standard that you need to use to pass regulatory scrutiny.

How do you bury a patent? They are all published, aren't they?

When he says bury what he means is that no one can use it to build something. The company just holds it to prevent everyone else from using the idea.

Sigh. Patents should really be use-it-or-lose-it.

I'd love to know the patent number just to see how it works. I wonder if there are countries you could build and sell the device in?

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