temporary tattoo offers needle-free method to monitor glucose levels

temporary tattoo offers needle-free method to monitor glucose levels
images courtesy of UC san diego jacobs school of engineering

developed by nanoengineers at the university of california in san diego, the flexible and easy-to-wear ‘temporary tattoo’ extracts and measures glucose levels in the fluid in between skin cells. the wearable device applies a very mild electrical current to the surface for 10 minutes which forces sodium ions in the liquid, to migrate towards the carefully patented, printed on electrodes. a built-in sensor interprets the strength of the charged generated to determine a person’s overall glucose amount, however, at present the paper technology does not have a numerical readout but one is being produced by researchers at the center for wearable sensors.

using the traditional testing method which utilizes a needle, is unpleasant and difficult to perform

‘the readout instrument will also eventually have bluetooth capabilities to send this information directly to the patient’s doctor in real-time or store data in the cloud,’ said graduate student amay bandodkar.

‘the concentration of glucose extracted by the non-invasive tattoo device is almost hundred times lower than the corresponding level in the human blood,’ she explained. ‘thus we had to develop a highly sensitive glucose sensor that could detect such low levels of glucose with high selectivity.’

the team is working on ways to make the tattoo last longer while keeping its overall cost down

even with google advancing their own non-invasive system, to date, people with diabetes must test their glucose levels multiple times per day, using an apparatus that features a tiny needle to extract a blood sample from their fingertip. the technology provides a step towards developing a non-intrusive form of glucose analyzing for patients with diabetes and could be the foundations for exploring further uses of the appliance, such as detecting other important metabolites and delivering medicines through the skin.

the printed electrodes

[h/t] gizmag