Slashdot Mirror
Designing Diabetes Gear?
Joe asks: "I'm a grad student studying medical product design. My thesis work is being done on devices used in the monitoring and treatment of Diabetes. I'd like to solicit feedback from the Slashdot community regarding the state of the art in the field. Are you a Type One who loves the OneTouch UltraSmart, or a Type Two that swears by the multi-strip AccuCheck Compact? My goal is to develop products that meet the varied needs of diabetics, in a manner closer to the iPod, rather than the current products which resemble crappy 2-button Tiger electronics videogames. What features in these devices do you like and dislike?"
Implants constantly monitoring blood chemical levels and reporting to your PDA would be kinda nice.
A tattoo on your arm that responds chromatically to insulin, sugar, etc. etc. levels in the blood and that could be read by something like a barcode reader would be good. Doesn't even have to be visible to humans, just the machines.
The whole puncturing yourself to get at real actual blood thing is Not Good(tm).
...an Englishman in London.
If you are going for the cool stuff, a reader that store the results, timestamps them and can display graphs of the sugar levels would be a great tool for doctors.
The Onetouch UltraSmart does this, though on the tiny screen it's difficult to make things out. The info can be downloaded via a serial cable and then printed out, much more readable. USB would be much easier, though.