Handheld Glucosimeters

It's glucometer.

Okay, patient-operated blood glucose samplers/testers. How do they work?

I will be having to use one myself soon. They may work like a PH test only with complex sugar. Or there are little blue men with white lab coats and beakers franticly trying to bet the deadline set by someone who has never been on the shop floor.

I use one every day. Sometimes several times each day. You just stick yourself to get a drop of blood, put the test strip in the meter, put the blood drop on the strip, wait a few seconds and your results pop onto the LCD screen. No pain once you learn where and how to stick your self. The Brand I use is called Accucheck and it comes with a booklet which explains the electro-chemical reaction in way too much detail for me. Maybe they have a web site with the details.

I too am a user of such machines and have been for many years. Early ones used treated paper areas that changed color based on chemical reaction. These days all seem to be electronic sensors. You can see the partially hidden circuit at the ends of each strip. Companies may have different techniques, but most, for the patient, seem pretty much the same. These days smaller drops of blood are used, and realistically can't get much smaller.

Meter size seems determined more by ergonomics than electronics as well.

There are many folks in the marketplace, so unless you might think you have a really new approach, I would not get excited. Meter cost is not the big issue, TESTSTRIP cost is the key. Most retail for Seventy Five cents to a dollar. You can look at a strip and guess that they cost pennies to make.

Thus, companies will give the meters away to have you as a long term customer.

Accuracy is about plus/minus 10% of lab results. I use an insuline pump which can deliver very small doses, clearly more exact than the meter readings we are reacting to.

A web search should provide all sorts of information. A patent search might be a direct way of gaining understanding.

Perhaps an engineer in the business willl chime in.

Steve, a user.

Don't miss the fact that continious meters are entering the market as well. Some use different technology than the hand helds.

Steve

Thanks to Steve and all the rest for your informative responses. Seems I've made a commonplace error in posting my question: asking a single track question respecting a device for which multi-track answers are possible. The kind of question that often results in descriptive as opposed to expository responses. My fault entirely. So let me try another tack.

We all know, it seems clear, that the dominant miniature testers take their information from test strips in which are...how shall I say...imbedded some kind of chemical substance or reagent which then reacts with blood drawn in by capillary action. Probably the chemical reactions are similar, if not essentially the same, from one tester brand to the next. Not mentioned previously, was that most testers require Calibration using a test solution that matches the tester's response or interpretation to the batch of test strips being used....presumably to chemical variabilities from one test strip batch, or batch assurance test, to the next.

Now, for purpose of this discussion--at least for the time being--let us assume that the test strips themselves are not actually a part of the meter. That is to say, they only serve to enable a reaction and then place the reactants' product material in a place where the meter can measure [something] and then perform its computations. My question, then, would apply solely to the meter itself--as to how it functions electrically to detect or measure [some input] and then goes about computing and displaying a certain blood sugar concentration to a high degree of accuracy. What is it, electrically speaking, that the meter's circuitry, interfaced with the test strip's, actually measures? And how is this electrically translated into a readout? Perhaps someone from electronics can weigh in on this as well. I checked some Web sources and there was not much to be found on this electrical aspect; only on the chemical reactions.

well, I have use one of those meter myself to check my blood sugar level. I think (and I'm only guessing here) the test strip act like a straw to draw the blood sample, and the meter somehow break down the blood sugar content (presumly through cemical reaction) to give the result as to how much sugar is in your blood stream. Prehaps it calculate the electrical conductivity of the blood sample and display the result. Someone must have a table of data inputed into the meter and when the conductivity of the blood is 2uV is equal to 70 mg/L of sugar in the blood let say. (I don't really know what the actual umber is.)

MidniteFighter