Diabetes Device

Many people suffering from diabetes need to check their blood glucose levels frequently to avoid the risk of dangerous complications such as a coma or heart attack. This means they need to prick their fingers and produce small drips of blood often multiple times a day. To make this daily chore more pleasant, and possibly eliminate it completely, researchers have developed a wearable device (shown) that uses a special laser technology called Raman spectroscopy to monitor glucose levels in the skin. In a study of healthy people whose glucose levels were tested before and at regular intervals after a glucose drink, measurements with the spectroscopy device were equally as accurate as finger prick tests. If the device can be confirmed as accurate in patients, and can be miniaturised into a continuously wearable form, it may be possible to replace finger prick tests altogether.

Today is World Diabetes Day

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by S.P. Singh and colleagues, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• Laser Biomedical Research Center, G. R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, July 2018