The research into better technology for finger pricking has been steady, albeit slow, as the best options seem to be smaller gauge lancets. But a smaller lancet isn't advancing diabetes management to something that smacks the pain factor and the finger pebbles that accompany multiple sticks year after year.
However, this might all change because a new diabetes device was introduced that would potentially do away with finger sticks.** The device is in the form of a rub-on temporary tattoo that absorbs glucose from the surface of your skin, by sucking your body's glucose into the nanoparticles that are embedded in the device.**
The team behind this device are the group the created the GlucoWatch. In fact, much of the technology is based on the GlucoWatch technology of using an electrical current to pull the glucose through the skin. The improvement for the tattoo is that the electrical current is much gentler current and the bulk that was so unattractive with the glucowatch is reduced to a flexible thin device that sticks to your skin.
In this reinvented effort the current runs through the skin, which detects the glucose through an enzyme that breaks glucose down into oxygen and hydrogen peroxide. It is the amount of hydrogen peroxide that signals the device to estimate the blood glucose reading, similar to how a standard blood glucose meter determines our blood sugar reading.
The time frame for this to reach the market place is yet unknown, but it has undergone human testing and with the technology being similar to Glucowatch maybe, just maybe it will not take so long.