I-Corps: Non-invasive, touch-based, natural sweat glucose sensor

Award ID: 2233076

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a glucose sensor for diabetes patients. Diabetes mellitus impacts over 37.3 million people within the United States and 422 million people worldwide. All type 1 and most type 2 diabetes patients need frequent glucose testing to prevent life-threatening hyper/hypoglycemia, ketoacidosis, and long-term complications due to mismanaged glucose levels. Existing glucose sensors include capillary-blood fingersticks and subdermal continuous glucose monitors (CGM). Currently, over 95% of diabetes patients still use finger-pricking glucometers as their main glucose monitoring method, which is painful, messy, inconvenient, and creates social barriers. This technology provides a pain-free, convenient, and accessible sensing technology with discreet usage that helps diabetes patients understand their health status without the physical, social and financial burdens of CGM and fingersticks. With improved user compliance, this technology can collect data for personalized lifestyle training and personalized guiding services for better diet and diabetes management, and potentially improve the life quality of diabetes patients while reducing their healthcare costs. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a completely non-invasive, touch-based glucose sensor for spot glucose checking for diabetes patients. Unlike previous non-invasive glucose sensors that rely on unreliable near-infrared light or radio-frequency dielectric spectroscopy, this technology is based on FDA-approved electrochemical enzymatic glucose sensing which is highly selective and accurate. Instead of using fingertip capillary blood as the sensing biofluid, this sensor design allows the direct measurement of glucose within the constantly available passive perspiration from the fingertips. The technology allows users to obtain a sweat glucose reading by placing their fingers directly onto the sensor surface, where the natural fingertip sweat reacts readily with the sensor to produce an amperometric signal. With a first-time personalized calibration, the user is able to convert their sweat glucose signal to their blood glucose level with high accuracy. Thus, touch-based, non-invasive and reliable glucose sensing can be achieved. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Molly Wasko