Non invasive BG testing

[Paulbreen]

Good afternoon all, I just got pinged by a German company who have been working on non invasive BG monitoring looking for Beta system testing candidates, I thought it looked very interesting for those who dont like pricking and are not using CGM technology, T2's I would say would find this technology useful if it gets into the market place, take a look at the link below, it seems they have moved past the big prototype unit they have been testing with and are reducing the size of the equipment to real world requirements.
There is an English section to the website you can select at the top right side of the home page.

https://www.diamontech.de/home
Admins I hope its ok to post the website, please remove if not

 

[Irisaria]

This does look interesting but it's going to be very pricey if you have to buy your own infrared laser!

 

[Paulbreen]

This does look interesting but it's going to be very pricey if you have to buy your own infrared laser!

Hi Irisaria, looking at it and as an engineer myself it looks to be a unit that has no consumables unlike most other testing devices so a one off cost.
The laser will be the low cost part of it, I would expect the mechanical components will be the difficult part to miniaturise I do think its something that will develop in the next couple of years to be a watch like device, Like a lot of people here we all got excited with CGM technology like the Libre sensors and now they are becoming mainstream for us T1's.
The ping i got from them today was to see if i wanted to participate in their clinical trials for the hand held device so its going to be a couple of years before we see something useful but its nice to know there are lots of interesting developments going on

 

[BadaBing]

Hi Irisaria, looking at it and as an engineer myself it looks to be a unit that has no consumables unlike most other testing devices so a one off cost.
The laser will be the low cost part of it, I would expect the mechanical components will be the difficult part to miniaturise I do think its something that will develop in the next couple of years to be a watch like device, Like a lot of people here we all got excited with CGM technology like the Libre sensors and now they are becoming mainstream for us T1's.
The ping i got from them today was to see if i wanted to participate in their clinical trials for the hand held device so its going to be a couple of years before we see something useful but its nice to know there are lots of interesting developments going on

Hello Paul. I hope all is good with you.

May I ask a question please with your engineer's hat on?

I am fascinated by these in development future devices for measuring glucose levels that involve the use of lasers.

But as a non-engineer, if someone says "lasers," I think immediately of the scene in Goldfinger where Connery's 007 is about to be cut in half by one.

I know that if one has laser surgery to to treat leaking blood vessels in the eye, that surgery leaves tiny scars following the surgery.

Is it now possible to have a laser capable of "piercing" the skin as part of a system accurate enough to be used used to measure glucose in the blood or other cells of the body, but which won't damage the user's cells, skin, or other organs in the short, medium or long term?

 

[Paulbreen]

Hi Badabing From what I read the laser is not piercing the skin, it is only measuring the very small temperature change caused by the Glucose in the system on the surface of the skin. I use lasers very often for measuring the Geometric data of large machines and they would be much more powerful than this small laser and there is no side effects from being near them. There are of course the 007 lasers around, mostly in military applications, but lasers these days are used in many many applications, a new use which has come to the engineering world in the last few years is laser welding and cutting.
I wouldn't worry too much about this non invasive BG measurement causing any physical damage to your skin it is only going to be using light at a level that is miniscule to gather a reflective value I.E. it knows how much power it used to send the beam and it measures how much is reflected back and uses an algorithm to calculate the temperature of the skin.

 

[BadaBing]

Hi Badabing From what I read the laser is not piercing the skin, it is only measuring the very small temperature change caused by the Glucose in the system on the surface of the skin. I use lasers very often for measuring the Geometric data of large machines and they would be much more powerful than this small laser and there is no side effects from being near them. There are of course the 007 lasers around, mostly in military applications, but lasers these days are used in many many applications, a new use which has come to the engineering world in the last few years is laser welding and cutting.
I wouldn't worry too much about this non invasive BG measurement causing any physical damage to your skin it is only going to be using light at a level that is miniscule to gather a reflective value I.E. it knows how much power it used to send the beam and it measures how much is reflected back and uses an algorithm to calculate the temperature of the skin.

Thank you!

I've watched too many "supervillain tries to evaporate the world with dastardly device, but our hero is on hand to stop him" movies.

So I need only be concerned about how accurate the glucose measuring device is likely to be.

 

[Paulbreen]

Thank you!

I've watched too many "supervillain tries to evaporate the world with dastardly device, but our hero is on hand to stop him" movies.

So I need only be concerned about how accurate the glucose measuring device is likely to be.

Yip I dont know the ins and outs of it yet but the video on the website shows a very accurate reading when compared to the finger prick

 

[rayray119]

looks intersting but couldn't really do it well out and about.

nevermind just saw they have a hled hold dicives as well

 

[Eddy Edson]

On the one hand, I would want to see more about how this differentiates from the horde of other wannabe non-invasive BG measurement plays. Any data available?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19322968211046326

Our approach to noninvasive glucose monitoring, where we read every few weeks about a new breakthrough technology, is “Show me the data!”

On the other hand, they have a bit of support from serious players including Samsung Ventures, so somebody thinks there have some value: https://www.drugdeliverybusiness.co...r-laser-based-blood-glucose-detection-system/

 

[BadaBing]

On the one hand, I would want to see more about how this differentiates from the horde of other wannabe non-invasive BG measurement plays. Any data available?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19322968211046326

Our approach to noninvasive glucose monitoring, where we read every few weeks about a new breakthrough technology, is “Show me the data!”

On the other hand, they have a bit of support from serious players including Samsung Ventures, so somebody thinks there have some value: https://www.drugdeliverybusiness.co...r-laser-based-blood-glucose-detection-system/

Yes, I keep reading Samsung and Apple have been trying to come up with an identical method for measuring glucose which they can add to their range of health smartwatches for some time. Every year there is a frisson of excitement and anticipation from diabetic users of their watches that the next iteration of their watch will be "the one," only be be dashed at the last moment when they tell the world that feature won't be included yet.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Interesting to hear there’s a new player in the non-invasive market.

One of the first diabetes events I was invited to was for C8 Medisensors who were developing a non-invasive monitor based on raman spectroscopy.

They got as far as having a product CE Marked, and had clinical trial data showing promising results. They were ‘just making a few tweaks’ before a planned launch… Someone at the meeting was
wearing one.

Yet despite many thousands (millions?) spent on R&D, and a wearable product that was already miniaturised - the company haemorrhaged money and the product never managed to make it to market.

I’ll reserve my excitement until they are a few more steps forward, but wish them every success with this really tricky stage 🙂

 

[helli]

One of the first diabetes events I was invited to was for C8 Medisensors who were developing a non-invasive monitor based on raman spectroscopy.

I must learn to read the words on the screen rather than what my brain thinks they say.
Ramen spectroscopy? How do you use noodles to test blood sugars? Do noodles have blood sugars? 😳

 

[Docb]

I’ll reserve my excitement until they are a few more steps forward, but wish them every success with this really tricky stage 🙂

Absolutely right @everydayupsanddowns. Looks an interesting idea and probably provides the basis for development.

The hardware is no doubt doable but they will have the perennial problem with this sort of thing of discriminating signal from noise and I can't help but think that in this system there will be one hell of a lot of noise with an elusive signal lurking in there somewhere to find!

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Absolutely right @everydayupsanddowns. Looks an interesting idea and probably provides the basis for development.

The hardware is no doubt doable but they will have the perennial problem with this sort of thing of discriminating signal from noise and I can't help but think that in this system there will be one hell of a lot of noise with an elusive signal lurking in there somewhere to find!

I’ve often thought this about research, and first-in-class product development.

There are a lot of frogs to be kissed… but eventually one of them will come good.

So all power to the elbows of the smart cookies who are trying to generate the interesting ideas then turn those into viable concepts, and then the trickiest of all phases (when a lot of the money has been spent) getting from there to an actual working and saleable product.

 

[Paulbreen]

I had heard of this project about 3/4 years ago and thought nothing of it, but I was surprised to receive an invite to the trials for the hand held device so they must be making progress to get it down to that size, one to watch i think

 

[Eddy Edson]

I’ve often thought this about research, and first-in-class product development.

There are a lot of frogs to be kissed… but eventually one of them will come good.

So all power to the elbows of the smart cookies who are trying to generate the interesting ideas then turn those into viable concepts, and then the trickiest of all phases (when a lot of the money has been spent) getting from there to an actual working and saleable product.

The money, resources, time required to get a product like this off the lab bench, through trials and reg hurdles and into the supply chain ....

Look at the Freestyle Libre.

Dev started by Therasense, a wildly successful BG monitor start-up (zero to USD $210M revenue in 5 years!) sometime before 2000, spending ~$20M a year on R&D, leading to FDA pre-market approval application in 2003 for the "Freestyle Navigator", the ancestor to the Libre. Abbott bought Therasense in 2004 for USD $1.2B and spent years & large $$$ productising the Libre, launched in 2016.

Hundreds of millions of $$$, 16+ years of some of the smartest medtech people in the world.

It's obviously not just a matter of kissing enough technology frogs, and things like this don't get to the medical device market without a big company-style development, regulatory and market effort.

A major potential issue for the economics is that these non-intrusive plays generally don't have a consumable. It can be hard to make medical device economics work without a recurrent consumable revenue stream (like test strips or sensors).

Eg: the Libre did $3.7B revenue for Abbott in 2021 with an annual growth rate of 40%+. That's driven largely by sensor sales, of course, and I suppose the total CGM market must be well over $7B annually, growing fast.

By contrast, the entire global consumable-less BP monitor market is worth about $1.5B per annum, with modest growth.

It's obviously not apples-vs-apples, but if the NI BG monitor opportunity looks more like BP monitors than CGM, it might be difficult to make the economics work if a Freestyle Libre-scale pre-market investment is required ....