Home
- Eating Well (or at Least Not terribly) at Fast Food Resturants
You can view the current or previous issues of Diabetes Health online, in their entirety, anytime you want.
Click Here To View
See if you qualify for our free healthcare professional magazines. Click here to start your application for Pre-Diabetes Health, Diabetes Health Pharmacist and Diabetes Health Professional.
Latest Meters Articles
Popular Meters Articles
Highly Recommended Meters Articles
Email to a Friend
Send a link to this page to your friends and colleagues.
Birds of a Feather Check BGs Together
What do you get when you cross a pelican with an albatross?
When applied to blood glucose testing, the answer is: big benefits. Just change “pelican” to Pelikan Technologies in Palo Alto, California, and “albatross” to Albatros Technologies.
Pelikan Technologies has developed the electronically controlled Pelikan Sun lancing system, already approved by the FDA. When it becomes available in a few months, it will be the first lancing system to allow us to perform the entire lancing process at the touch of a button.
A Match Made in Heaven
In December 2004, Pelikan Technologies bought the German company Inventus. The acquisition provides Pelikan with the Inventus GlucoSens blood glucose meter. Pelikan immediately changed the Inventus name to Albatros Technologies.
The German spellings of “Pelikan” and “Albatros” are no coincidence; Pelikan’s president and CEO, Dirk Boecker, MD, PhD, hails from that country.
“We now own all technologies and components necessary for the development of our advanced fully integrated glucose-monitoring device,” says Boecker. “The sensor fits nicely into the format of the Pelikan Sun. Yet it will be about the size of Apple’s iPod mini and weigh about 5 ounces.”
The fully integrated one-step device will have 50 lancets and 50 sensors in one disk. There will be no strips.
“This is a device for everybody, but children and the elderly in particular have special needs,” says Boecker. “Children are the people with the most sensitive skin, and they have to test for their entire life. This device will let them be more compliant.”
Waiting to Fly
Pelikan and Albatros don’t expect the device to be on the market until 2007. The company hasn’t named it yet, but my guess is that it will be the German name for a beautiful bird.
Disks, Discs and Drums
Pelikan will offer the first lancing disk and, eventually, the first lancing and sensing disk.
Currently, two Bayer meters—the Ascensia Dex 2 and Ascensia Breeze—use a 10-test-strip disc, which does away with handling individual test strips.
Roche’s Accu-Chek Compact also automates the strip-handling process. It enables test strips to be dispensed from a drum of 17 strips with a press of a button.
The ReliOn NewTek contains 100 preloaded test strips. Hypoguard markets this meter exclusively through Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.
MediSense’s Precision Sof-Tact was the first glucose monitor to offer lancing, blood collection and glucose testing with a single press of a button. Yet you still have to load each lancet and test strip.
Categories: Blood Glucose, Meters
You May Also Be Interested In...
-
Diabetes Health
Diabetes Health is the essential resource for people living with diabetes- both newly diagnosed and experienced as well as the professionals who care for them. We provide balanced expert news and information on living healthfully with diabetes. Each issue includes cutting-edge editorial coverage of new products, research, treatment options, and meaningful lifestyle issues.
-
Topics
- Diabetic / Diabetes Health
- Type 1 / 1.5 Diabetes
- Type 2 Diabetes
- Blood Glucose / Sugar
- High/Low Blood Sugar / Fast Acting Glucose
- Insulin- Pumps, Pens & Syringes
- Continuous Glucose Monitors, CGM, Infusion Sets
- Type 2 Medications
- Hyperglycemia
- Hypoglycemia
Comments
Add your comments about this article below. You can add comments as a registered user or anonymously. If you choose to post anonymously your comments will be sent to our moderator for approval before they appear on this page. If you choose to post as a registered user your comments will appear instantly.
When voicing your views via the comment feature, please respect the Diabetes Health community by refraining from comments that could be considered offensive to other people. Diabetes Health reserves the right to remove comments when necessary to maintain the cordial voice of the diabetes community.
For your privacy and protection, we ask that you do not include personal details such as address or telephone number in any comments posted.
Don't have your Diabetes Health Username? Register now and add your comments to all our content.
Register...
Register your Diabetes Health Username here.
Have Your Say...