Selecting a Mail Order Meter

If you get your blood glucose meters and test strips by mail order, you have a new choice that is well worth considering. It's the OneTouch Select from LifeScan, one of the top two meter manufacturers in terms of volume.

OneTouch Select

While LifeScan pushes its top-of-the-line meters like the OneTouch Ultra2 and UltraSmart, you may never had heard of the OneTouch Select before. I know that I didn't know anything about it until my friend, Tim Cady, the president of Advanced Diabetes Supply in Carlsbad, California, happened to mention it to my on the phone recently.

"It's a good meter," Tim told me. "It's very similar to the OneTouch Ultra2."

The OneTouch Select takes just a speck of blood, about one microliter. You get your result in five seconds. It does require coding, like all of LifeScan's meters to date. But it has a data port for downloading your results to computer software. LifeScan describes the OneTouch Select in a page on its website.

Advanced Diabetes Supply gives away the meter when you buy test strips for its standard price of $38.50 for 50 strips. ADS will bill your insurance company.

I still think that it's strange for LifeScan to offer one of its meters exclusively by mail order. This must certainly mean that so many American now have diabetes that the mail order niche warrants this big company's attention. While that's bad news for us in general, it's good news for us individually.