Sunday, February 20, 2005

Glucon: The Non-invasive, Continuous glucose Monitoring Watch

Glucon was just awarded a US patent for its glucose monitoring technology. This could just be the end of the use of pricks and their related monitoring devices. The patented technology is based on monitoring photoacoustic waves originating in the blood vessel to calculate the concentration of glucose in the blood vessel. So, far, the only product known to me that provides non-invasive glucose monitoring is the GlucoWatch Biographer and it is works on the measuring fluid rather than blood to monitor sugar levels. The drawbacks of the GlucoWatch were that it was less effective at detecting very low glucose levels (hypoglycemia) than it was at detecting very high levels (hyperglycemia). In addition, the device would not measure blood sugar at all if a person's arm was too sweaty. The device also caused mild to moderate skin irritation in at least 50 percent of the people using it (Source).