Monitor your blood glucose without finger prick soon
A team of two associate professors and three research scholars of the IIT-BHU has developed a noninvasive blood glucose monitoring medical device that has so far recorded 86% accuracy, just 9% short of achieving the level needed for the commercialisation of the device.
The technique called noninvasive blood glucometer has been developed using modulated ultrasound and infrared light in a pain free and medically safer way.
Associate professors Dr Neeraj Sharma and Dr Shiru Sharma along with their team including research scholars Koushik Chowdhury, Anuj Srivastava and Sanjay Saxena at the School of Biomedical Engineering, IIT-BHU, have been working on the device since 2011.
We filed for the patent on January 18, 2013, informed Dr Neeraj Sharma.
“Incidence of diabetes is increasing across the world and India is no different with high number of diabetics. The best way to maintain their healthy condition is regular monitoring of glucose level in blood and intake of medication accordingly. But the existing invasive methods include pain, mental agony and infection liabilities due to the use of needle. Thus, the concept of non-invasive technique has come,” added he.
“Some non-invasive devices like Pendra and GlucoWatch were launched in the market but were soon withdrawn. We have prepared a table to find the non-invasive blood glucose level corresponding to actual blood glucose concentration. It yields promising results with around 86% of present rate of accuracy,” he said. Explaining the process of the device, Koushik said, “The present technique uses a designed prototype unit MUSIR (modulated ultra sound-infra red) system and a finger probe to be used on human finger.