If you did not know, those who suffer from diabetes need to do more than just be careful about what they eat. There is actually quite a long and troublesome process that many need to go through before they take each meal, such as measuring the carbohydrate contents of their meals, measuring glucose levels, and more.
They then need to calculate all of this in order to determine the correct insulin dose for it to be the most effective. This means that eating out can be troublesome as you might need to bring several devices with you, but researchers at MIT are hoping to change that as they are developing a device that will act as an all-in-one solution.
Right now, the researchers have developed two models. One uses readily-available tech that combines the blood drawing lancet and glucose testing strip and insulin needle into a single device. First it draws the user’s blood and tests it on the strip, the data is then calculated to determine the dosage and then insulin is injected into the user.
The second device is more streamlined and involves a single needle with a glucose sensor, so when users inject themselves, it measures glucose levels before releasing insulin into the user’s blood. There will also be an accompanying smartphone app that users use to take a photo of their food to determine the volume and carbohydrate content using a phone’s depth-sensing camera and deep learning.
The idea behind this device is to streamline the entire process, making it easier for diabetics to stay on top of things so that they will be motivated to continue their treatment.