iPhone reads blood glucose level with nanosensor tattoo (Updated)

As a Physician, I applaud any method that enables patients with diabetes to take better care of themselves. If the technology is easy and gives accurate results, that's a big plus. Taking multiple medications several times daily is difficult enough, so if a product can make monitoring one's blood sugar easier, all the better.
This has nothing to do with politics, health care systems, or anything other than helping a substantial number of people help themselves with a serious illness.

As a medical laboratory scientist, I must say whilst the technology sounds great in principle, it is how accurately and precisely the device can measure glucose in the blood that matters. New technologies arise all the time, but there is a big difference between designing a nifty piece of equipment and a device that is actually fit for purpose, hence rigorous testing and approval requirements.

As a mother of a juvenile diabetic who was diagnosed at age 11, thank you for this information. To the scientists who invented or developed this procedure- WOW!!!! am I ever impressed. Sure hope Obamacare doesn't eliminate innovation like this or have government non-medical employees like the British GP's mentioned below second guessing established diabetic protocols because of costs. Sounds to me like the patient's health and benefit could easily be tossed aside on a whim and I wonder if innovations as reported above will ever actually be supplied to market. Obamacare already imposes a new tax on medical devices that have caused companies like Medtronics MiniMed to lay off thousands in order to balance the cost of the new tax and the price to market. Blood sugar readings are key to fighting back high readings and protecting against lows which cause blackouts and death.

May I recommend this: http://www.bayercontourusb.com/ - It records directly onto the device and can then be plugged into any Mac/PC device to transfer the readings and averages.

In relation to your arcticle, with finger pricking a 'route to infection' - I have to disagree, if used properly and following the guidelines, it won't cause infeciton and as long as you alternate it won't cause pain. Indeed the costs for the testing strips are expensive (about £20), however they are all covered under our national health service so we don't incur any charges. If you want to change your meter, you can just inform your GP and have the testing strips for your new model added to your free prescription.

It seems like an interesting idea, but it's seems far too much hassle for what it is at the moment.

As a diabetic who has stuck to one brand of meter, I would like to be able to download all the data to my Mac or iDevice. Short of entering data directly into an app, there is no decent software for Apple products. About time someone wrote a decent application that will read meters from all manufacturers instead of gaffing about with fancy stuff that's probably going to cost an arm and a leg or will take the same amount of time as using existing meters and manual data entry.