Pin Pricks for Blood Sugar Testing Could Be History With New Sensor for Children

A team of researchers from Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth is carrying out the world's first trial of an electronic sensor, which could revolutionize how children with type 1 diabetes receive their regular insulin doses. The new device is injected under the skin, to take constant blood sugar readings, thus removing the need for finger prick tests.

It sends those readings to a specially programmed BlackBerry mobile phone, which calculates how much insulin the child needs and tells the pump how much to release into the bloodstream.

Head of the hospital's diabetes department Tim Jones said the device had been developed as part of a wider international project to invent an artificial pancreas to act as a technological solution to insulin replacement, reports the Australian.

"So far the device has worked beautifully," Professor Jones said.

"It will lift the burden of managing diabetes significantly if we can get it to work.

"The idea is to take the person out of the loop because people are unreliable and put a machine there instead," he added.

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Source-ANI