A painful prick of the fingertip reveals a mountain of medical information for many diabetes patients. But health professionals have long struggled to find a reliable and painless way to gather blood sugar measurements. Just last year, Google announced that it was developing contact lenses that measure glucose levels in its user’s tears. But now, nanoengineers may have found an even easier way for diabetes patients to monitor their vital levels: temporary tattoos.
The new device is painless—It contains electrodes printed on a thin tattoo paper that patients can even dispose after use. “Presently the tattoo sensor can easily survive for a day,” Bandodkar said in a statement. “These are extremely inexpensive—a few cents—and hence can be replaced without much financial burden on the patient.”
The tattoo has already provided accurate glucose measures for seven healthy patients, the team reported in a recent issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.
The tattoo is a few steps away from providing the numeric value of glucose levels, so scientists have to remove and analyse the it in order to retrieve its measurements. Eventually, Bandodkar said the tattoo will have “Bluetooth capabilities to send this information directly to the patient’s doctor in real-time or store data in the cloud.”
This article was originally published on www.theatlantic.com. Read the complete article here.
