The treatment of one chronic condition, diabetes, costs the US health system over $400 billion per year.  Type II diabetes is preventable when detected in the prediabetes state, through preemptive measures such as modifying diet and exercising habits.  However, pre-screening is not often employed due to the cost and increased difficulty of screening using current methods, either a full blood panel or the purchase of a purpose-built device.  Currently, four out of five adults with prediabetes in the US do not know they have it.

Modern smartphones offer apps to monitor bank accounts, social media status, nutrition, location, and many other areas of life.  There are also step counters and views into the Electronic Health Record, but we haven’t fully tapped into the potential of the smartphone to attain and maintain health.

To respond to this need, we at GlucoScreen are creating a range of rapid diagnostic test strips that attach directly to your phone, using chemistry from off-the-shelf electrochemical rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and adapting them for direct smartphone use.  We will include data from these strips in an intuitive interface that allows people a glanceable snapshot of their health and progress against the risk of chronic diseases.

The technology behind the first product in this line, GlucoScreen, has been validated in a proof-of-concept study, both in a lab setting and a medical clinical setting.  It proved to be as accurate as purpose-built glucometers in the metrics measured by the FDA for clearance.  The results can be seen in our paper in IMWUT from 2023 and are compatible with every phone on the planet with a camera flash and a touchscreen, almost 7 billion phones worldwide.

At GlucoScreen, we are interested in enabling people to be empowered with information to take control of their health, in collaboration with their doctors and available treatment programs that can help reduce the risk of chronic disease and allow more people to live up to their full potential.