Testing Your Blood Sugar with Your iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Testing Your Blood Sugar with Your iPhone

blog.drchrono.com

62 pointsmgh235 comments

"The process is clunky and uncomfortable — and dangerous due to potential errors." -- No, it's not. Not anymore dangerous than the presented solution anyway, which seems to be a common glucose meter connected to an iPhone. To track your glucose levels with the phone is a good idea, but safer? No, the testing method is exactly the same.

There is actually a quiet revolution going on in glucose monitoring technology/accuracy right now. The current standard of +-20% of a lab standard is being challenged and a host of data is being presented at scientific conferences that show better performance.

You can get a usb based, digital glucose meter from Bayer called the Contour USB. It even has a display built in.

It's potentially free after coupons if you are buying strips.

But the glucose meter market is a huge scam, with what is essentially 1 cent litmus strips being sold for $1 each - manufacturers are milking insurance for all it's worth and the people without insurance have to spend a small fortune.

I'm sure it's extracting many millions from the economy that could be far better used.

Now that's a racket I'd like to see a startup disrupt someday.

The test strips for my former meter are $64 for 50. Sometimes I just don't test; I can get away with that because I don't use insulin.

Kroger (King Soopers in Colorado) has partnered with Wave Sense to sell a cheap meter (most meters are cheap anyway); the test strips are $34 for 100. I test a little more now.

Not a startup type disruption. The pharmacist told me Kroger just wanted to help out.

I'm imagining a $100 device that instead of using any supplies like strips or needles, maybe uses a ultrasonic pulse as a micro-drill to extract a molecular sized droplet of blood to test.

Then it would clean itself using the same ultrasonic pulse emitter.

Or maybe forgo the whole blood deal and somehow use saliva.

It should be possible with saliva but the conditions are finicky. You have to make sure you're reasonably hydrated, but haven't eaten or drank anything in the last 10 minutes, etc.

> "with what is essentially 1 cent litmus strips ..."

Not that I disagree with most of what you said but my mother is diabetic, recently diagnosed, and from what I can tell the strips have some sort of micro-channels.

You touch blood to one side or the other of a test strip, none of the blood is visible other than where it's touching the test strip. It gets to the meter internally through the strip almost instantly I'd say in less than half a second if not less, pretty much instantaneous.

Too bad there isn't an open source meter and cheaper strips.

By the way on Reddit there is r/diabetes if anyone wants to join whether you're diabetic or not.

The author of this article clearly has not actually spoken to a diabetic. All current meters are almost as small and mobile and are all perfectly safe and accurate. The only benefit of this is the added visualisation aspect from having the readings on a larger high resolution screen. I've read about the iBGStar a few times, but I really can't understand why they use the 30 pin connector instead of bluetooth. It seems unnecessarily limiting

And if it was Bluetooth you wouldn't be limited to use an iPhone.

There are bigger issues to consider when crossing platforms than wireless vs. 30 pin. One huge drawback for Android is device/os fragmentation which makes proper, medical grade, testing very difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

Just to clarify, does the iBGStar device perform the actual test and then the result is transferred to the iPhone, or is the iPhone actually part of the result computation process?

If the former, I can't see how transferring the results to an Android phone via bluetooth or USB would cause any problems and it would be extremely simple to end up with the data in an SQLite database for analysis using a very simple front-end app.

Having just an iPhone-specific product seems to limit your potential market considerably.

As a developer myself, I disagree. Assuming your device is what actually performs the test, the statement made here is just BS spouted by those that don't want to support Android.

> I've read about the iBGStar a few times, but I really can't understand why they use the 30 pin connector instead of bluetooth. It seems unnecessarily limiting

Not to mention the fact that many diabetics need to check their blood sugar several times a day, which could introduce a lot of wear and tear on both the glucometer and the iPhone.

I remember when these machines cost several hundred dollars, were difficult to calibrate, and about the size of a netbook, but most glucometers these days are small and can be purchased for as little as $10.

The ability to record and track blood glucose levers over time is a "nice to have" feature, but this data could also easily be stored on the device and transferred to a computer later via a bluetooth or mini-USB connection.

We've found the real time nature of transfer is very helpful. For instance, now doctors don't need to waste time downloading a meter, they just look at their patient's phone. A small technical difference, but makes a huge difference in the way the tool is used.

I'm not so sure about this one. Doctors generally need the BG records to be appended to the patient's ongoing records, so they can spot both macro- and micro-trends.

I doubt many endocrinologists would decide to forego capturing the data because, "Oh, hey look, you've got a cool iPhone app."

Bluetooth devices have been around for a good long while and Android has had this exact same capability since last year. An example is at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FG89GC?ie=UTF8&tag=... (apparently no longer in stock :( ).

Disclaimer: I wrote the Android app that would speak to that meter last year. It did blood glucose AND blood pressure and would transmit the data (via a companion app) to Google Health (until they killed Google Health. Sigh.)

That is a fine device, but not really portable. The challenge we had designing the iBGStar was making a credible glucose meter that was affordable and also tiny. It was a real team effort between our ID, UI, and HW engineering teams to make a fully functional, medical grade tool that also fit nicely with the portable phone form.

Hi Joe, Couple points:

- The current level of accuracy glucose meters are required to provide is quite poor. The current standard is +-20% of a lab standard 95% of the time in concentrations above 75 mg/dL. The strip technology used by the iBGStar a pretty big improvement. Not sure if Sanofi has any whitepapers on their site, But worth a look.

- I'm one of the designers of the iBGStar and we considered Bluetooth. We actually have another FDA cleared product that uses Bluetooth, but cost, battery life, and a bunch of technical issues led us to favor the 30 pin.

Feel free to email me if you have any other questions, or ideas!

Please don't forget the Android users. With Bluetooth or micro-usb (with an iPhone adapter), it would then be a software issue to support both rather than a hardware issue. While I don't have empirical evidence to back this up, my feeling is that Android devices may be slightly more popular for Diabetics because they are generally more budget friendly than an iPhone and diabetics have enough costs in their life already (my wife is Type 1.)

Regardless, please consider support both eco-systems.

Just a quick comment: I work in healthcare market access, and insurance companies won't give a crap about accuracy, which means you won't sell many units. They care about tangible benefits to them that reduce costs: better patient outcomes, lower costs.

Focus on that and you'll get somewhere.

"Could this be the beginning of mobile diabetes monitoring?"

As so many people above have stated, no, you moron. We've been monitoring blood sugar on the go for the past 30 years.

I've got Type 1 diabetes...and my current meter is smaller than the one shown here. I can plug it into my Mac via USB to download and visualize the data (& can control my insulin pump via bluetooth using the meter).

The only benefit with this particular iPhone-compatible meter would be enhanced, immediate visualization of results. Which might be easier to get, and might not, given the inconvenience of having to remove an iPhone case and plug in the meter. (Not to mention other issues - what if my iPhone's batteries are dead? Will it still work?)

Unfortunately, this product reminds me of 5 years ago, when someone would announce a new toaster, and the tech crowd wouldn't be impressed...unless it was a Bluetooth toaster. We're so focused on it being the hot new thing (it's compatible with iOS! Oooh!!) that we ignore the fact that there's nothing revolutionary being presented here.

The way I see it, this doesn't really change anything in terms of treatment. If it's a more accurate meter, great - sell based on that. Not on the bogus "we're taking blood glucose monitoring mobile" claims.

When I saw this headline, I thought that a new technology that does away with finger sticking was becoming available. The new technology uses a small flourescent tattoo that contains nanoparticles that flouresce differently depending on blood glucose levels. The researchers are using a detector attached to an iPhone to measure the flourescence, and convert it into a glucose measurement. This isn't continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), but it would be an order of magnitude less expensive. It would allow for much more frequent glucose testing, without the pain of finger sticking, and without the ongoing cost of test strips.

For more information, check out this post: "http://www.diabetesmine.com/2011/08/the-tiny-tattoo-that-cou...

This is what I've wanted for a while. I don't remember to carry my diabetes notebook everywhere, so I've been using these iphone apps for storing the measurements. It's still kind of clunky and I haven't found any apps with good UI and ability to export the result in a way I don't have to spend time in a spreadsheet program.

Want.

My wife had some kind of proto version of this. No iPhone connection, but the glucose meter could save a few measurements (around 50 I think) and they were then transferred via Bluetooth to a 3G enabled box that uploaded the measurements to a server.

Depending on your location you can get one now: http://www.boots.com/en/iBGStar-blood-glucose-meter_1253400/

Reading the comments, it seems hard to find test strips for the meter.

When living in Europe, you get the strips for free from the government. I have to consult my doctor on Monday if it's possible to get the strips here in Germany.

It is definitely available in Germany, and most of Europe, I can't speak to the specifics about how to get strips, but perhaps this will help: http://www.bgstar.de/ibgstar

TLDR: They invented a meter, extremely similar to the ones you have used for the last 10 years, that clicks into your iPhone. If you are too lazy to use one of the many excellent logging apps or softwares, this will be great, if you have an iPhone. All in all it is a well designed gimmick for Sanofi to sell moar strips.

I was really hoping for something cool with that title, like maybe using the camera and flash to magically estimate your mg/dl when your in a bind.

But then I read: >Over 18 million Americans have diabetes, and they all live with the painful, often thrice-daily process of using needles to check blood sugar. The process is clunky and uncomfortable — and dangerous due to potential errors.

And thought, it's not really painful at all, hopefully people check more than 3 times per day, it may be awkward to check in public but not clunky.

I am pretty pissed at the pace of technology development in the diabetes arena, but this is not exactly a step forward.

It is also worth checking out Glooko, a startup from Palo Alto. They have a logbook product that runs on iOS (the grapevine tells me Android is under development) and also has a web site it can sync with. They have a cable that goes from the iPhone/iPod to many of the common glucose meters on the market today (many have what looks like a headphone jack but is really a serial port).

http://www.glooko.com/en/product/logbook/

It should also be pointed out that it isn't only the folks who have to inject insulin (type 1 diabetics) but also the increasingly larger population of type 2 diabetics where their body parts become increasingly "deaf" to insulin. The biggest factor in blood sugar rises is what and how much you eat, so logbooks and software can help you track the correlation. (Exercise is the biggest factor in lowering blood sugar.)

This article infuriated me. I wrote a long comment and then it turned into a huge blog post with links and pictures and 20 years of history. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheSadStateOfDiabetesTechnolog...

I use a standard meter (I'm type 1) and I enter my results into Diamedic* for iPhone. It provides a lot of the graphing seen here, and it's rather easy to enter the information. I don't regret the purchase of the software.

*http://www.martoon.com/Diamedic/Diamedic/Overview.html

As a type 2 diabetic I'm very interested in this product and looking into it now.

Now if only you could do away with test strips. They're so expensive, if insurance doesn't cover it.

Amen to this and I think the title is a little misleading no? This looks like it is really about testing blood sugar with a regular meter that has a nice connection to upload the data to an iphone. I'm glad there are smart people working on this, but I'm waiting on the quantum leap in this field

This device won't work on any iPhone in a case unfortunately.

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