Wow just read the press release, they claim it is under clinical trials while they keep refining the engineering. They are using radar and claim it is actually an improvement over current tech. My interest is peaked with my being a type 1 diabetic w 42 years on RNA derived insulin and 42 years since starting fingerstick blood glucose tests since Febuary 1983. I've been on CGM for around 5 or 6 years now.
Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
141–150 of 171 posts
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly do you mean by "you don’t want to deplete glycogen stores" ?
It sounds like the system would release a hormone known as glucagon when blood sugar levels are too low. Glucagon triggers cellular pathways that break down glycogen stores into glucose molecules, and releases the glucose into the bloodstream. This is opposed to how diabetics handle it normally, by merely eating a sugary snack- however that takes longer to impact blood sugar levels. Depleting these stores could be ca…
Yes T1 here, those body glucose reserves shouldn't be used for regular control. They are reserves for exertion and emergencies. 42 years in, I'm fortunate with a high metabolism and I've always consumed fat as somewhat free extra calories. I use olive oil as a condiment I feel it gives me a standing energy reserve.
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#143Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me the worst part of current CGMs isn't the needle or the very thin piece of plastic it leaves behind with the probe. Rather, it's the effect on the skin under the patch and the residual adhesive. So from that perspective a watch would be cool. Indeed though, advancements in (affordable) closed loop tech matter more than where the CGM is worn.
Can you say more about the plastic left behind? Polyurethane coating on the cannula?
Been using a dexcom g7 for a few weeks as a test. Pulling the sensor off can be painful, and leaves behind adhesive residue when I do it. And there's also a bit of inflammation in the area since it sticks a small probe into you, which sits there for 10 days.
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#145We - at DiaMonTech - are working on non-invasive glucose monitoring for over a decade now. It's a hard and complex problem and as long as clinical data is missing, I'm very sceptical. We just reached (in a clinical trial) a comparable accuracy as early-stage invasive devices that got FDA approved with a shoe-box-sized device and we still have some work to do. The pre-print of our publication is here: https://www.rese…
I was actually thinking about your product when venting my frustrations elsewhere in the thread. Your site was mentioning elsewhere that you had a working shoebox-sized device which, "due to its size", was "only targeted at hospitals". Man, you have no idea. I'd gladly buy a shoebox-sized thing. No finger pricking and no test strips to buy is the king. It could be 4U rackmount thing for all I care, as long as it was…
It's not approved yet anyway. But if you are ever in Berlin, let me know and I'll give you a tour.
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#146We - at DiaMonTech - are working on non-invasive glucose monitoring for over a decade now. It's a hard and complex problem and as long as clinical data is missing, I'm very sceptical. We just reached (in a clinical trial) a comparable accuracy as early-stage invasive devices that got FDA approved with a shoe-box-sized device and we still have some work to do. The pre-print of our publication is here: https://www.rese…
Why do you think that this will not reach the market anytime soon?
Because the engineers of the University of Waterloo haven't shown any clinical data yet.
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it fits in a watch a lot of nondiabetics will also buy it. It can be much cheaper that way.
Why would I as a nondiabetic buy it? Out of general curiosity for my blood sugar levels?
I believe GP assumes the reader of their comment to understand that one of the types of diabetes is acquired during ones lifetime, by over-consumption of certain types of nutrition.
Preventing non-hereditary diabetes could be much cheaper from a societal perspective.
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#148The comparison to weather satellites is misleading and oversells this technology. Weather radar works by detecting water droplets at known atmospheric heights - it's a fundamentally different problem than trying to measure glucose concentrations in blood through layers of tissue. The real breakthrough here isn't the radar tech (which has existed for years), it's the machine learning pipeline that can extract meaningf…
I don't believe the claim is radio echolocation, but radio spectroscopy.
I didn't read the paper yet, but I predict from the comments in this HN thread, that the proposed system is essentially a dielectric spectroscopy setup optimized for glucose detection (or any number of proxy byproducts/complexes/etc..)
Check this wikipedia page for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_spectroscopy
Look at the picture on the right, from typically lower to higher frequencies there is the motion response of ions, the reorientation response of molecules with a dipole moment, the excitation of vibrational modes in a molecule and the electronic excitation of electrons switching orbitals...
EDIT: since I have not read the article, I do not vouch for its authenticity (above my paygrade)
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for calling this out. That was also my impression after having skimmed their paper: the only link to glucose monitoring is that the authors mention a few papers on the topic to motivate their research. And looking at the papers they cite, I see little evidence that this approach could work in practice in the near future. Most of the citations [2, 15, 16] are to their own work, which did not look at glucose mon…
I assume there's an RF mixer somewhere in there. Edit: read the paper, now more confused
I don’t have access to the full text, but I loved this part:
> Commercial CGM devices have certain drawbacks in diabetic measurement during daily activities such as food intake, sleeping, exercise and driving. The drawbacks are continuous radiations from devices
So they think a drawback of CGM is the (Bluetooth) radiation, and their alternative is to zap the pancreas with, um, magic dielectric radiation? Or magic radiation that results in “dielectric” backscatter?
I do find myself wondering whether a watch- or patch-sized object could get a usable NMR signal from glucose. Maybe a neodymium magnet and a very carefully shaped probe antenna to compensate for the horribly nonuniform magnetic field? Maybe an AC field with no permanent magnet at all? I found a reference suggesting that measuring glucose in blood outside the body by 1T NMR is doable but marginal, so this may be a lost cause.
Re: Researchers design wearable tech that can sense glucose levels more accurately
#150Sorry to break the party. A buddy of mine is deeply skeptical, and he is one of the few with a decent amount of peer-reviewed publications about non-invasive blood glucose measurement. The idea to use "Radar near-field sensing" is everything but new and nothing has ever come out of it. "Breakthroughs" in this field are a dime a dozen: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/liom-cracks-holy-grail-non-22... My buddy is one of…
This is "my uncle who works at Nintendo said Sony sucks" level information to anyone but you. I do agree on one part regardless of any of that though... I'm at the point of waiting for the one who actually sells me said device instead of the one that says they'll soon be able to.
At this state, they are likely able to do this. Not small enough for your watch but a working stationary device that can RELIABLY monitor your blood sugar. And with blood sugar I don't mean the skin prick test. If people claim they compared to the skin prick test and "it works" they have no idea what they are talking about. You have to compare venereal blood glucose with measured blood glucose and use the Clarke error grid to show what you are doing.
And yes, skin color or skin temperature (fever!) does not matter for his measurement. I once submitted an SBIR grant for this project, but have no involvement anymore with this project. The NIH found this approach "highly innovative" but thought it can not be realized bc the technology is "prohibitive expensive". I assume they did not really read the proposal. I explicitly wrote that, while such a device costs 50k on the market, a slimmed down version produced in quantities would cost a few hundred dollars. They just had a short look at the approach, googled the hardware behind it, and rejected it. An idiot and google is a very dangerous combination!