Before we each jump in to blog about our project, we thought it would help to have a description of the problem that we are trying to solve, and a short statement of our design challenge.
As part of Dlab Health, we went on an information collection trip to Nicaragua. In one of the poorer regions, Esteli, we visited the Regional Hospital and discovered that they only had one glucometer that was being shared between 15 clinics! As a result, diabetes patients were not able to monitor their blood glucose levels on a regular basis, and so were not able to control their disease. Not keeping glucose concentrations within safe margins increases the risk of diabetes related serious conditions.
The reason that all the polyclinics and the regional hospital in Esteli were sharing a single glucometer was because of the expensive test strips. Though glucometers are commonly donated, boxes of test strips are not, and since these test strips are proprietary they could not afford to keep buying them. For example, we found a glucometer online for $40, however the test strips that had to be used with it cost $40 for a pack of 25. Thats over a $1 per strip!
Therefore, our design challenge is to design a fast, cheap, safe and reliable way of measuring glucose levels that can be used widely by diabetes patients even in poor resource settings.
- Allen, Mike, Deepali, Yi and Priyanka
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