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Andriod testing

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Nadia Robertshaw

Nadia Robertshaw

Active Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
Hi all,

I’m currently involved in a diabetic trial which involves testing android phones, along with the relevant software. I must admit I’m very impressed so far.

All I have to do is put my finger alongside the camera on the phone, then allow a minute for the data to be collected. No finger pricking . Obviously, I still have to test and provide the company with a traditional reading.

The trial period is lasting 48 hours, within that time you have to provide 15 readings.

I’m curious to know has anyone taken part in trials before?

Have you seen the end results then introduced to the overall care of diabetics?
 
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In order to become involved I initially completed an application form.

The link to the website was available via Facebook.

www.bioepicstudies.com, it still appears to be open today for volunteers.

The company then contacted me, I was required to read there published information before agreeing and signing to take part.

Once I signed the relevant forms they provided me with a link to download the software to my mobile along with a glucose log to complete throughout the 48 hours trial period.

On completion of the 48 hours, and 15 glucose readings I will be paid by the company for the inconvenience.
Obviously, to me it’s not an inconvenience as I would be taking the readings anyway.

Plus anything technology based to do with diabetes interests me very much. I also like the idea, I maybe helping in the way forward with diabetes and finger pricking.
 
Nadia Robertshaw said:
All I have to do is put my finger alongside the camera on the phone, then allow a minute for the data to be collected. No finger pricking
Click to expand...
What is the camera/phone doing? Is it taking a BG reading? A couple of years ago, at a Diabetes Support Group meeting, we had a talk from a resarcher. He was developing a device to take a reading. The idea was to place your finger on a small window in the device, and it would use light to take a reading. It wasn't easy to get it to work for multiply people, certainly not out of the box. It's still not out there (as far as I know).
Interesting, if they're doing the same thing with a generic phone & camera.
 
Hi Ralph,

That’s exactly my understanding. The camera on the andriod mobile takes a photo of you’re finger in order to get a bg reading. I’ve not had any major issues as yet, the only thing I am finding is the software doesn’t come on immediately after pressing start. There’s seems to be a slight delay before it starts working.

The trial I’m involved in, is for andriod and iPhones. Would be great if software like this became available, no finger pricking, affordable, no other device as it would be on mobiles.

We will see tho, I guess only time will tell too.
 
Here’s the company’s ambitious forward plan:

“Bioepic Limited is the World’s only company to combine a natural supplement that have multiple health benefits with Applications that allows users to measure the improvements.

Pioneering, technology company that builds Mobile Health (mHealth) Apps that turn smartphones into medical-grade, health monitors allowing people to make informed choices about their health, sporting performance and wellbeing.”

Make of that what you will. Sounds like bull poop to me. Bit over the top for a company based in a terraced house in Hereford. The thing that bothers me is that first paragraph. Note the grammatical error. That’s not me typing, it’s been copied and pasted.

To be honest I can’t see how you can measure blood glucose through the skin. It’s a relatively impermeable membrane, keeps everything inside, which is just as well.

The pulse oxymeter that is used in hospitals ( that’s the clip they stick on the end of your finger) measures the oxygen saturation of haemaglobin by shining a bright light into the tissues below the skin. It can also measure pulse rate. But that’s about the limit of through skin technology. You can’t do it without that bright light. And you can’t do it by photographing the skin.
 
mikeyB said:
To be honest I can’t see how you can measure blood glucose through the skin. It’s a relatively impermeable membrane, keeps everything inside, which is just as well.

The pulse oxymeter that is used in hospitals ( that’s the clip they stick on the end of your finger) measures the oxygen saturation of haemaglobin by shining a bright light into the tissues below the skin. It can also measure pulse rate. But that’s about the limit of through skin technology. You can’t do it without that bright light. And you can’t do it by photographing the skin.
Click to expand...

One of the first things I got invited to was a preentation by C8 Medisensors, a Californian company who had poured literally millions of $ into research and development of a continuous glucose monitor which used raman spectroscopy (if I remember right) to determine tissue glucose using light. When the company folded (about 5 years ago) they had very nearly got to the point of a CGM with no consumables and had it CE marked. But they just couldn't get it to work reliably enough. Too much light leakage, and other confounding factors. Some of the technical peeps were rapidly snapped up by Apple, apparently, who were interested in exploring/developing the research as part of the Apple watch. Absolutely nothing heard since. So that shows just how difficult and how phenomenally expensive it would be to create a product that fulfills this promise. The comments here are fascinating... https://www.everydayupsanddowns.co.uk/2013/06/has-light-gone-out-on-c8-medisensors.html

I really have no idea how something as wildly variable as a cameraphone could be used as part of one!

Be interested to hear how you get on with it @Nadia Robertshaw 🙂
 
I should add, the pulse oxymeters used in hospital are not used for continuous monitoring, because of the danger of burns. That rather stymies the potential for light based CGM.
 
It will be interesting to see what happens.

With this trial, for every reading the mobile has taken I’ve had to take a reading with my standard bg meter. I’m sure those readings will be compared to whatever the mobile has taken.

I’ve got three more readings to do today, then that’s my part in the trial complete. So I then have to email the company my bg log that accompanies the mobile.

So will keep you posted.

To be honest I’m expecting to receive my payment. Then be asked what they should do with my general information they are holding, and that then be the end of it.
 
I expect there would have to be some extremely nifty analytics happening in the cloud together with a very comprehensive database to make this more than vapour. I'd also expect it to take a hell of a lot more than the GBP 900K they appear to have raised from an angel group. Presumably what they're trying to do now is gather some data which looks promising enough to get somebody to invest the next few million.
 
Nadia, are you seeing the collected data, i.e. is it in line with your traditional finger prick results?
 
Ralph-YK said:
A couple of years ago, at a Diabetes Support Group meeting, we had a talk from a resarcher. He was developing a device to take a reading. The idea was to place your finger on a small window in the device, and it would use light to take a reading. It wasn't easy to get it to work for multiply people,
Click to expand...

mikeyB said:
skin. It’s a relatively impermeable membrane, keeps everything inside, which is just as well.

The pulse oxymeter that is used in hospitals ( that’s the clip they stick on the end of your finger) measures the oxygen saturation of haemaglobin by shining a bright light into the tissues below the skin.
Click to expand...
The research I mentioned hadn't overcome the differences in people's skin. And generally doing it through the skin might have been an issue. They used some sort laser and specially coated glass.
 
missclb said:
Nadia, are you seeing the collected data, i.e. is it in line with your traditional finger prick results?
Click to expand...

No, I’m not able to see any data that’s been collected. I just have to take the scan of my finger, then do a traditional bg reading on my monitor and send that through along with the scan.
 
So you weren’t able to see the readings the app took, and they now have your data to tie in with each reading.

Well, charitably, they now know how accurate their system is. Uncharitably, they now have data that they can fraudulently use to show that the system works. Even music hall mind readers used subtler tricks than that.

As PT Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute. He also commented that nobody ever went bust overestimating the stupidity of the people. (Though H L Mencken said it first).
 
My daughter was part of the official Freestyle Libre trial to see if it worked on children, as a result of which it was then licenced for use by anyone over the age of 4 years old instead of 18. That was also a blind trial, we had to scan at least every 8 hours (and it would just say "thank you - scan accepted" or something like that), and at the same time also do a blood test with it (which we could see the results of). At the end of the two weeks the data would be compared. When we returned to give back the scanner and have the sensor removed they did unmask it for half an hour so that we could have a play, see how it worked properly and have a look at all the data it had been collecting.
 
If that happens in this trial I’ll eat my shoes, Sally. :D

The thought that occurs to me is even under a microscope, you can’t determine whether the blood you are looking at is from a diabetic or not. Blood cells aren’t physically changed by diabetic glucose levels, nor is the appearance of plasma. So what is this system looking at? Skin.

You can possibly do it with spectroscopy, but even modern spectroscopy machines are at least the size of a suitcase.

Just think, if glucose were volatile like ketones are, you could do breath tests for glucose.🙄
 
I've been in contact with these guys in the past. They're the ones that appeared in the press late last year. They were supposed to be launching a semi-open pilot for people to use the software early in 2018, but this never came to anything. I think it may be proving more difficult than they had expected.
 
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