It works well, but it's painful. To use it, patients would apply low-frequency ultrasound to the skin for a minute or two in the morning, which creates tiny openings in the skin that remain open for 15 hours. A patch is then applied to collect glucose, measure it and give a reading at regular intervals. It tells you very important information, which is the slope,'' or direction in which the glucose levels are heading. Diabetes makes the glucose level high, but when you take insulin, it can make it too low and you go into hypoglycemia.
People just pass out.
It's very important to find out whether you are going into hypoglycemia before you go there. A device like this will help you do that.'' Using the same technology, says Langer, it may also be possible to monitor other blood chemicals, taking the sting out of routine blood tests. If you have a child who needs blood drawn, instead of putting a needle in the arm, you could use this,'' he says. But more testing is needed, the researchers say, to assess the safety of repeated use. We saw no ill effects.