Affordable and sustainable self-powered GLUCOSE sensing system for a global FAIR diabetes management

FAIRGLUCOSE proposes a low cost, sustainable and self-powered standalone glucose sensing system that relies on the well-known oxidation process of glucose coming from finger prick blood and transfers it to a voltage readout through an innovative and extremely simple strategy.

In this way, a measurement that typically requires a potentiostat with a microcontroller and a battery is performed here with a minimalistic and battery-less circuit that fits within the footprint of a commercial glucose strip.

This allows for a reduction not only in device cost, but also in the generation of waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE or e-waste), avoiding the cumulative effect of millions of tests and their corresponding batteries performed at remote sites away from adequate recycling infrastructures.

In order to interpret the result, the strip can be integrated in a card format that translates voltage into level bars accounting for low, normal and high glucose indicators a solution that would substitute urine strips - or into a more sophisticated but still low-cost card containing a NFC chip allowing the transferring of a numeric result into a cell phone.

Both cards could be implemented with state-of-the art flexible electronics technologies and could be reused infinite times, as energy would always come from the sample.

The first targeted market of FAIRGLUCOSE solutions is located in low and middle-income countries, where cost of current glucometers limits severely the self-monitoring of blood glucose among population.

However, at mid-term it is likely that the sustainability and affordability of the approach displaces the current glucose players in some market niches of developed countries and generates new applications in the healthcare and agro-food arena.

Thus, FAIRGLUCOSE aims to investigate the commercial feasibility of this disruptive approach and create an innovation roadmap that allows deploying the technology where it can make the most.