The result is poor control of glucose levels, potentially leading to serious complications later in life and high health care costs. Clearly an unmet need exists for convenient, ongoing, patient-accessible information about glucose levels. The GlucoWatch Biographer uses technology that has never been available before, differing from conventional blood glucose testing devices in several ways. Most significantly, it is non-invasive, measuring glucose collected through the skin, not from blood. It measures and displays glucose levels automatically, as often as every twenty minutes, for up to twelve hours.
Users can also set personal glucose alert levels.
An alarm sounds if readings are too high or too low, or if readings rapidly decline. The GlucoWatch Biographer is designed to give people with diabetes and their caregivers more information about glucose levels, enabling them to make better-informed decisions regarding diet, medication and physical activities. Cygnus plans to leverage a variety of emerging technologies from the biotech, computer, communications and software industries, accessing resources in the San Francisco Bay Area and nearby Silicon Valley to continue developing glucose monitoring products. For example, the company is already working to allow the information stored by the GlucoWatch Biographer to be downloaded into personal computers, and is investigating the use of the Internet as a means of transferring glucose information between people with diabetes and their caregivers. Controlled marketing of the GlucoWatch Biographer in the United Kingdom began in 2000, to assess patient usage experiences and to fine-tune education programs and customer support before making the device more widely available there later this year.