A device that checks blood glucose levels by touch may help those with diabetes to avoid needles

• A Canadian company made a device that measures blood glucose by using an electrocardiogram.
• You only need to put your fingers on the device for 60 seconds for it to scan your sugar levels.
• It also uses artificial intelligence to produce the glucose level reading.

Diabetics have to deal with countless needle pricks or use implants to record their blood glucose levels.

But in the future, neither of these methods may be necessary. 

At the largest technology fair in the United States, CES 2022, Canadian company Scanbo unveiled a device that can measure blood glucose levels with the help of an electrocardiogram and artificial intelligence (AI).

You place your fingers on the device for 60 seconds to take your blood glucose reading.

Scanbo also uses a photoplethysmogram, which measures changes in blood volume in different parts of the body. 

According to TechCrunch, the company claims the device can also carry out blood pressure measurements.

“We use the three electrodes for ECG data, and an additional measurement for PPG. We measure for 60 seconds, and then take the raw data and analyze that using the machine learning convolutional neural network, and the deep neural network,” Ashissh Raichura, CEO of Scanbo, told TechCrunch.

The combination of all the data and the help of AI ultimately results in the blood glucose reading.

“As a company, we are a combination of AI and med-tech,” Raichura explained.

He also told TechCrunch that the product offers a significant price reduction, while also explaining some of the environmental advantages of the device.

“We are very, very cost-effective, and we can bring the cost down to as low as $20 a month. There is no biowaste, you don’t need any disposables, you don’t need strips or anything, just purely the machine learning algorithm and a device with a chargeable battery,” he said.

For now, the Scanbo device is just a prototype.

TechCrunch reported that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t approved similar products yet, so it may be some time before the product comes to market.