Personal Technology Diabetic Tester That Talks to iPhones and Doctors
by Walt Mossberg January 4, 2012
While consumer technology advances by leaps and bounds, the devices patients use to manage diseases often seem stuck in the past. A glaring example is the glucometer, the instrument diabetics use to measure the sugar in their blood-information they use to adjust their diet, exercise and medication.
These meters, which analyze drops of blood drawn from fingertips, typically resemble crude PDAs from 10 or 15 years ago. They offer little feedback and can't connect to the Internet to show results to caregivers. Most diabetics who use them log their readings on paper, which they hand doctors weeks or months later.
But that is beginning to change. Next week, a small start-up will introduce a new diabetes meter it says is the first with wireless technology that instantly transmits a patient's readings to a private online database, which can be accessed by the patient or - with permission - by a doctor, caregiver or family member. This system charts the results to highlight trends and spot problems, and can be accessed via a Web browser or an iPhone app. It automatically transmits relevant feedback - such as whether your readings seem high or low - and allows doctors to respond.
I've been testing this new meter and service, which is called Telcare and comes from a Bethesda, Md., company of the same name. As a Type 2 diabetic myself, I found the Telcare meter a refreshing change, and a significant step toward bringing consumer medical devices closer to the world of modern technology.
...
Mr. Mossberg, despite his qualifications to evaluate the convenience of a new glucose testing system, has not mentioned the /reason/ that medical instruments such as glucometers change very slowly. It is that medicine is not supposed to be a sales vehicle for electronic gadgets which saddle their users with never-ending, unavoidable fees that take yet-another bite out of the fixed incomes of retirees and add unneeded complexity, expense, and inconvenience to the practice of medicine.
This device costs $99.95 from the "Telcare" website, /if/ customers subscribe to a "plan":
Test Strip List Price: $55.95 Your Price: $35.95
"The plan requires the purchase of at least 4 Telcare Test Strip vials per quarter at its reduced contract price."
... which translates into $35.95 times four vials times four quarters, or $575.20 per year, and the site also offers a "care" plan that will replace the meter /once/ in a year for $6.95 per month, or $83.40 per year. Any customer that doesn't buy the 16 vials of test strips is, according to the "terms and conditions" page, obligated to pay a one-time fee of $100.00.
In other words, this is an expensive and unnecessary solution in search of a problem. The only "need" it addresses - and I'm very surprised that Mr. Mossberg doesn't realize this - is that of the Health Maintenance industry, to deliver electronic data to low-paid physicians in foreign countries, who can, in turn, deliver cheap advice to patients they have never met.
Bill Horne Moderator