This Tattoo for Diabetics Might Mean the End of Finger Pricking

Diabetics engage in a painful ritual every day, often several times: pricking their fingers with a spring-loaded needle to test the glucose in their blood. But that ritual could soon be put to rest, and replaced by a small patch designed to extract and measure blood-sugar levels. Flexible, easy to apply, and inconspicuous, the next-generation wearable is a promising step toward noninvasive monitoring of diabetes, a disease that affects 29.1 million people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control [PDF].

The invention is the work of a team of nanoengineers at University of California, San Diego, who published their proof of concept in the journal Analytical Chemistry. About the thickness of a piece of tape, the device consists of a small sensor and patterned electrodes screen-printed on temporary tattoo paper. A mild electrical voltage applied to the skin pulls fluid from the skin, and the sensor, which contains the enzyme specific to glucose, measures the sugar concentration.