Needle-free diabetes care: 7 devices that painlessly monitor blood sugar

 Needle-free diabetes care:  7 devices that painlessly monitor blood sugar

Will the daily routine of finger pricking to monitor blood sugar levels finally come to an end for the millions living with diabetes?

Diabetes affects over 537 million adults worldwide. People with diabetes have to test their blood sugar levels several times a day, usually by pricking their finger with a lancet. This can be uncomfortable and painful for many, which can result in less frequent testing and consequently worse control of blood sugar levels.

The last decade has seen the rise of blood sugar monitors that are installed by pricking the skin and only need replacing every few weeks. One of the best sellers is FreeStyle Libre, developed by Abbott Diabetes Care in the U.S., which measures glucose levels in the interstitial fluid between the cells right under the skin. 

Many companies around the world aim to make the lives of millions of people with diabetes easier by developing non-invasive methods of glucose monitoring. Making these methods as accurate as traditional test strips is a tough undertaking, however. One high-profile example is the Google Contact Lens, which was abandoned in 2018 because its method of reading glucose levels in tears wasn’t consistent enough. 

Companies that can crack the challenges of measuring glucose accurately and affordably with no needles stand to reap a share of the fast-growing market of blood glucose monitors. Here is a shortlist of some of the most exciting candidates in the market and in the pipeline.

Table of contents

1. D-Base
2. Eversense
3. GlucoTrack
4. glucoWISE
5. NovioSense
6. Occuity Indigo

D-Base

D-Base is a shoebox-sized blood sugar monitor developed by the German firm DiaMonTech. The device measures blood sugar levels by beaming an infrared laser through the skin of a finger and causing glucose in the skin to convert the light to heat. The machine then calculates glucose levels based on the increase of heat in the skin. The increase in temperature is too minimal to be noticed by the user.

In 2019, D-Base was approved in the EU for use by medical professionals in clinical trials and diabetes centers. Earlier this year, the company attracted $5 million in funding — bringing its total to $20 million raised — to help bring D-Base to the U.S. market. Additionally, DiaMonTech is working on smaller versions of the technology, including a handheld device called D-Pocket as well as the small D-Sensor that can be used in wearable devices.

Photo/DiaMonTech

Eversense

Developed by U.S. company Senseonics and distributed by Ascensia Diabetes Care, Eversense is a subcutaneous implant that continuously monitors blood glucose levels. Although it initially needs to be installed under the skin by a doctor, the sensor can last for up to three months before needing a replacement. 

Eversense measures glucose in the interstitial fluid under the skin of the upper arm by using a polymer that fluoresces in response to the levels of blood sugar. The data is then sent to a transmitter that displays the blood glucose levels in real time.

The device received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2018 and the company struck a deal with Roche to distribute the sensor. A six-month version of the implant was approved in Europe in 2017 and in the U.S. in early 2022. Senseonics is also working on an implant that can last for up to one year.

Photo/Ascensia Diabetes Care

GlucoTrack

Developed by the U.S.–Israeli company Integrity Applications — now rebranded as GlucoTrack, Inc. — the GlucoTrack device can monitor blood sugar levels through a combination of ultrasonic, electromagnetic and thermal waves. To provide a readout, the sensor is clipped on the ear.

The device is indicated for adults with type 2 diabetes and is marketed in Europe. ​​Integrity Applications now aims to expand into the U.S. and is developing the second generation of GlucoTrack, which consists of a wireless ear clip sensor paired with a smartphone. Initial study results of the Gen 2 monitor have shown good performance and accuracy.

Photo/GlucoTrack, Inc.

glucoWISE

glucoWISE is a sensor under development that could measure blood glucose levels by just placing it on the skin between the thumb and forefinger. The real-time measurements are then sent directly to a smartphone app.  

By using a specific frequency of radio waves to measure blood glucose levels, the developers believe the device would be more accurate than are other wireless glucose monitors. 

The U.K. firm behind the technology, MediWise, was acquired by the Canadian smart materials and photonics specialist Meta Materials in 2018. Meta Materials is continuing the development of glucoWISE, which has already been tested in two small-scale human trials. Earlier this year, the device was granted a U.S. patent for non-invasive glucose sensing system. 

Photo/Gluco-wise

NovioSense

NovioSense is a Dutch startup working on a blood sugar monitor that is placed under the lower eyelid, from where it can wirelessly send glucose measurements directly to a smartphone. The device consists of a flexible metal coil of just two centimeters in length with nanosensors contained inside. In turn, the coil is covered by a protective layer of soft hydrogel.

The coil can measure minute-to-minute changes in the glucose levels of tear fluid by using the same enzyme technology on which conventional glucose strip tests are based. According to results from a clinical study published in 2020, the device is comparable in accuracy to the FreeStyle Libre.

Photo/Noviosense

Occuity Indigo

As an eye-focused blood glucose meter, Occuity Indigo takes a literal approach to the expression “the eyes are windows to the soul.” Rather than measuring tear fluid, the U.K. developer Occuity looks within the eyeball — similarly to the Google Contact Lens — as it is a transparent, stable environment whose glucose levels correlate with those of the blood.

The Occuity Indigo sends a faint beam of light into the eyeball and measures the light that bounces back into the device. It can infer glucose levels in the eye based on the refraction of the returning light.

The technology, which is still in research and development, was crowdfunded on Seedrs. Occuity is also developing a similar device that can screen people at risk of developing diabetes and other health conditions in the future.

Photo/Occuity

SugarBEAT

SugarBEAT, developed by U.K. biotech Nemaura Medical, is a replaceable skin patch attached to a transmitter suitable for people with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes as well as pre-diabetes. It measures blood glucose levels non-invasively by passing a low-level electric current across the skin that draws out a sample of the interstitial fluid, found just below the skin. 

The transmitter, which is rechargeable, sends data to the user’s phone every five minutes using Bluetooth and the readings can be monitored using an accompanying app. 

Nemaura’s smart device already has marketing approval in the EU, and the company has submitted a Premarket Approval to the U.S. FDA, which is currently in review.

Photo/Nemaura Medical

A room without books is like a body without a soul

 “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

— Loren Eiseley

Nothing to fear: AI just created a virus that is not found in nature.

*Rome’s Age of Revolution*

by  Tyler Cowen 

The author is Tim Whitmarsh and the subtitle is Augustus, Empire and the Making of Christianity.  This is the most important book on the history of Christianity I have read in a long time, and it is also an important work in Roman history.  Yet also fun and extremely readable.  Excerpt:

The story I have told so far has emphasised the fit between Christianity and the Greek world of the early Roman Empire; I have given relatively little space to conflict.  That has been quite deliberate.  One of the commonest misconceptions about the early Roman Empire is that it was a time of ceaseless and inevitable suppression of virtuous Christians by a brutal governmental machine.  This is a myth that has roots in antiquity itself, and has been pumped systematically into western popular culture since the nineteenth centuury.  It is a remarkably durable myth, because it is both emotionally seductive and ideologically powerful.  The idea that virtuous Christians were engaged in endless conflict with the Roman state makes for great narrative.  But the reality is more banal: most Christians were fully integrated into Roman society, and no more or less harassed than anyone else…

My argument has been, rather, that Christianity could not have come into being in anything like the form we know it without the revolutionary impact of Augustus’ political reforms.  It was this seismic change that fundamentally transformed Mediterranean thought…The most dramatic effect of the Augustan swirl was Christianity itself: a breakaway Judaean sect led by brilliant entrepreneurs who understood the opportunities offered by the new political dispensation, and rapidly reshaped their ideas to suit new audiences.

 

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• “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.” ―Victor Hugo
• “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!—When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ―Jane Austen
• “Books are the mirrors of the soul.”―Virginia Woolf
• “I can survive well enough on my own—if given the proper reading material.” ―Sarah J. Maas

• “If a book is well written, I always find it too short.” ―Jane Austen
• “Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again.” ―Louisa May Alcott
• “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ―Anna Quindlen
• “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ―Stephen King
• “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” ―Garrison Keillor
• “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” ―Harper Lee

• “There is no friend as loyal as a book.”―Ernest Hemingway
• “Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”―Lemony Snicket
• “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” ―René Descartes
• “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ―C.S. Lewis 
• “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” ―Henry David Thoreau
• “I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.” ―Emma Thompson

• “I guess there are never enough books.” ―John Steinbeck
• “For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.” ―Audrey Hepburn
• “Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.” ―Nora Ephron
• “Literature is my Utopia” ―Helen 

• “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” ―Cicero
• “The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.”―Eleanor Roosevelt
• “You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.” ―Paul Rand
• “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! —When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ―Jane Austen

• “I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.” ―Benedict Cumberbatch
• "Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." ―E.B. White

• “What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.” ―Oprah
• “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.” ―Walt Disney
• “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” ―Margaret Fuller
• “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” ―Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “I’ve always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds.” ―Taylor Jenkins Reid
• "I'm reading so much and exposing myself to so many new ideas. It almost feels like the chemistry and the structure of my brain is changing so rapidly sometimes,” ―Emma Watson
• "Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind," ―Toni Morrison
• “I have challenged myself that I will read thousands of books and I will empower myself with knowledge. Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism,” ―Malala Yousafzai
• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” ―Joseph Addison

• “Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.”―Mary Schmich
• “Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” ―Joyce Carol Oates
• “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” ―F. Scott Fitzgerald
• “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.”―Helen Exley
• “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” ―Mortimer J. Adler
• "One of the many gifts that books give readers is a connection to each other. When we share an affection for a writer, an author or a story, we also have a better understanding of people unlike ourselves. Books cultivate empathy." ―Sarah Jessica Parker 
• "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was." ―Ernest Hemingway 
• “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ―John Locke
• "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." ―Benjamin Franklin

• “There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” ―Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
• “I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.” ―Roald Dahl
• “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” ―C.S. Lewis
• “Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” ―Napoléon Bonaparte
• “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”―Maya Angelou
• “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” ―Harry Truman
• "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go," ―Dr. Seuss 

• “Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them.“ ―Judy Blume
• "I wouldn't be a songwriter if it wasn't for books that I loved as a kid. I think that when you can escape into a book it trains your imagination to think big and to think that more can exist than what you see." ―Taylor Swift 
• "Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible," ―Barack Obama 
• “I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.” ​​―Maya Angelou
• “Don’t give up reading, the more you practice, the easier it will get.” —Unknown
• “A child who carries a book with a bookmark in it is in two places at the same time.” ―Tony Abbott
• “When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young” ―Maya Angelou 
• “I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.” ―Robert Louis Stevenson

Museum sunlight: Cold River

 “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

— Loren Eiseley

National Library: Cold river : the cold truth of freedom

“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

From Noah’s flood to Shakespeare’s storms, what literature reveals about our changing relationship with the weather

46 Years ago it was floods everywhere - Slovaks cross border into Austria in inflatable boats and wade through river after low water stops ferry

Fresh v Čerstvy - Foreigners learn what really makes Slovak so difficult (in a fun way) Fresh bread can be "old" in Polish

How to Give a Eulogy

Tom Chiarella shares his rules for giving a eulogy.

It may hurt to write it. And reading it? For some, that’s the worst part. The world might spin a little, and everything familiar to you might fade for a few minutes. But remember, remind yourself as you stand there, you are the lucky one.

And that’s not because you aren’t dead. You were selected. You get to stand, face the group, the family, the world, and add it up. You’re being asked to do something at the very moment when nothing can be done. You get the last word in the attempt to define the outlines of a life. I don’t care what you say, bub: That is a gift.

This rule surprised me:

You must make them laugh. Laughs are a pivot point in a funeral. They are your responsibility. The best laughs come by forcing people not to idealize the dead. In order to do this, you have to be willing to tell a story, at the closing of which you draw conclusions that no one expects.

 Literature has long portrayed messed-up families. As poet Philip Larkin famously wrote, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do.”

Who are the worst fathers in literature?

Who are the worst mothers in literature?

Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 finalists include tiny seahorses and cooperating orcas

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