Grant: Idea to Innovation

Currently >500 million people worldwide have diabetes and the WHO predicts this will increase to 1.3 billion by 2050. These astounding and worrying figures have major implications for worldwide health and the immense healthcare costs of treating the complications of poorly controlled blood glucose that include stroke, heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, and even death. Therefore, specialized and accessible technology that shifts the burden from reactive treatment to proactive prevention and management will have a major impact on these numbers. The solution to these issues is the development of a cost-effective and reliable non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring (NICGM). To date, there are no NICGMs that are FDA- or Health Canada-approved and commercially available. The development of NICGMs is therefore considered a high priority globally and would have the real potential to empower everyone to be able to seamlessly assess their own blood glucose levels that will favour self-care rather than health-care. In the context of this landscape, our proposed highly novel NICGM system, based on low-energy microwave technology, aims to address these challenges. With its already demonstrated accuracy, cost-effectiveness, miniaturization potential, simplicity and ease of use, our solution holds the real promise of transforming diabetes management and prevention globally. Importantly, the features of this technology are also ideal for use in seemingly healthy individuals as a health and wellness device and a preventative tool for life management. Therefore, our technology extends its impact beyond diabetes to promote proactive health monitoring and disease prevention.