Glucophone

One of our ideas is to create a glucophone – the glucometer would be attached to the cell phone. An increasing number of people in developing countries have cell phones, so we thought that it would be a neat idea to combine glucose measurement and data collection with cell phones.

The pros of such an approach are that the cell phone can be used to display, power, and store data. The data can also be sent to a central database for remote patient monitoring. The doctor could have access to this data, and thus look at long terms trends in the patient’s blood glucose concentration should problems arise.

The cons of such an approach are that such a technology is expensive to develop and is technologically challenging to build(given the few weeks we have remaining in D-Lab Health). It would also be difficult to design a component attachable to all cell phones. There is also a company already doing this: http://glucophone.net/ However, it is not clear if this company still exists. Their copyright label at the bottom of the webpage goes to 2007 only…