The Boston Globe reports that the New England Healthcare Institute has released a report urging regulators to figure out ways to bring continuous glucose-monitoring devices to the market and for insurance companies to start reimbursing these life-improving devices for diabetic patients.
The Globe also says that Sontra Medical Corp. of Franklin, MA is developing a continuous glucose-monitoring device in conjunction with Bayer AG. (We have covered SonoPrep by Sontra Medical, a needle-free drug delivery device, earlier.)
From the company website:
SonoPrep® makes the skin ten times more permeable than other skin permeation methods, making it possible to collect a sufficient sample of interstitial fluid on a continuous, real-time basis. Sontra has developed a biosensor that is placed over the permeated skin and continually detects the glucose and other analytes contained in interstitial fluid. First, the patient uses the SonoPrep device to permeate the skin for up to twenty-four hours. Then the biosensor is placed on the permeated skin. The biosensor contains a proprietary, non-irritating, osmotic extraction medium to continuously extract interstitial fluid and draw the analytes into the biosensor. The biosensor then measures the rate at which glucose is flowing into the sensor (glucose flux), and changes in concentrations of glucose contained in the interstitial fluid are calculated continuously and correlated to blood glucose concentrations through mathematical algorithms. Sontra’s biosensor is a key component of Sontra’s Symphony Diabetes Management System that the company is co-developing with Bayer Diagnostics. The Company intends to expand the application of its SonoPrep technology to detect and measure other analytes such as alcohol and other blood chemistries that are traditionally measured by sending blood samples to the lab for analysis.
Symphony™ Diabetes Management System website…
Continuous glucose monitoring projects covered by Medgadget earlier…
