Elevator pitch at the MIT Museum

So all of the D-lab teams presented a one-minute pitch about their project at the MIT Museum last Saturday. This is what I said about Glucotank:

“Diabetes is a disease in which the body cannot effectively regulate blood glucose levels. Thus, patients with diabetes have glucose levels which can fluctuate dramatically in a few hours. These patients could fall into low blood glucose levels, which can cause a coma, or high blood glucose levels, which can cause long term complications like kidney or even heart failure. Patients in developed countries typically measure their glucose levels four to five times a day which a glucose machine, also known as a glucometer. They drop a finger prick of blood onto a test strip, which the glucometer then reads to measure glucose levels. By measuring their own blood glucose levels, these patients can act quickly and correct for swings in their glucose concentrations – such as by eating sugary foods or taking an insulin pill. However, current glucometers are not appropriate for patients in developing countries. Test strips are expensive and proprietary, and poor supply distribution in developing countries prevents patients from easily getting compatible test strips and glucometers. This is a problem, because each year 6 million people develop diabetes, and 80% of these new cases of diabetes will appear in developing countries several years from now. We have developed an open-source platform for reading blood glucose levels, which can be locally manufactured and sold at a significantly lower cost than existing glucometers. Our test strips change in color intensity depending on the concentration of glucose, and our reader measures the color intensity to determine the approximate glucose concentration range. Thank you and be sure to check out our poster to learn more!”