Future of Engineering

Traditional methods to monitor the blood sugar level are usually painful. Patients have to prick their skin to squeeze out a blood sample on to a test strip. When this strip is inserted into a blood meter it reveals the level of blood sugar in their body. Most patients do this twice a day, but some have to do it several times per day. It is sure to test anybody's patience and endurance level.

This will be a thing of the past if one starts using the B-FIT a tiny prototype chip (Bio-Flips Integrable Transdermal MicroSystem) invented by the researchers at Georgetown University. B-FIT is a small biosenser device that can be worn anywhere in the body.

It painlessly removes a patient's outer-dermis, by using a 'micro-hotplate' (or micro-heater), which measures about 50 microns square. For 30 milliseconds, the hotplate is turned on to a temperature of 130oC. Then it makes a tiny pore in the skin, through which interstitial fluid can rise. The biosensor then reads the glucose levels in the sample fluid through tiny electrodes coated with a substance that reacts specifically to the glucose.

Sounds hot and painful. In reality the patient doesn't feel a thing. Being funded by the DARPA this was initially designed for military purposes and now it is being designed for normal use too.

Hope to see you soon little chip. For you are sure to win the hearts of diabetics all around the world.

Source - Georgetown University

Labels: Bio-engineering, Instrumentation-Engineering