Gizmos and Gadgets – Ang makulay na daigdig ng Diabetes
Mia C. Fojas, MD, FPCp, DPSEM
Wifi Weighing Scale
For the weight watchers, how would you like to keep track of your weight daily? That could easily be done with a pen and paper or probably nicer to see if plotted in a graph in your native spreadsheet like excel or numbers.
How would you like these done for you by something else? No pen and paper, no calculators?
The Withings company in France has developed the first WiFi Connected body scale with Google Health integration. The scale keeps track of your weight, lean and fat mass, body mass index and graphs these data easily for you. A secure free webpage for recording purposes is provided by Withings and a free iPhone application, WiScale. You could opt to upload your details in your own Google health account and forward it to your doctor, or if you’ve reached your target weight, you could even Twitter about it.
The Withings scale was introduced in the United States last September 2009 and is currently available for ordering online through www.withings.com for US$159.
Contact Lens Plus
Glucose monitoring has indeed gone into the era of nanotechnology and slowly saying goodbye to lancets and everything that requires pricking into the skin.
Through nanotechnology, glucose levels could be monitored using an ordinary tattoo, and soon using Colored contact lenses.
A group of scientists headed by Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Professor Jin Zhang from the University of Western Ontario has recently received a US$ 216,000 grant from Canada Foundation for Innovation to further develop multifunctional nanocomposites after their newly invented contact lens glucose monitoring system was recognized by CFI. The hydrogel lenses were embedded with nanoparticles that reacted with glucose molecules in naturally occurring tears. The chemical reaction produced different hues depending on the wearer’s glucose level.
Say goodbye soon to pinpricks. Let’s just hope that the hazel color won’t signify glucose levels beyond 200 mg/dL.
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What is nanotechnology? “Nanos” is a Greek word that means one-billionth part of something. Getting into the nanoscale, 1 nanometer = 10-9 meter. A double stranded DNA is 2 nm, while a cell is about 1000 nm.
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