Non-Invasive Way to Check Blood Glucose… Using Light?

I'm sorry, but the cover photo I chose just really said something to me when I saw it.  Who smiles when they do the finger prick blood glucose check?  Whether you are pricking your fingers multiple times a day or using the wearable monitors with the under-the-skin sensor wire, it's just not fun.

After reading Chris' article about the mass recall of wearable glucose monitors, I came across an article talking about how researchers at MIT had found a way to non-invasively monitor blood glucose levels using light.

Light?  How does that work?

No clue, but I'm not a physicist or an MIT researcher.  According to the article, this project has been going on since 2010, when MIT first announced they had figured out how to do it.  The whole thing uses something called Raman spectroscopy.

No.  Not even close.  It's RamAn, not RamEn.  It's named after a Nobel Prize winning physicist, C.V. Raman.

Wow, that was bad and you should feel bad for even attempting that joke.

OK, my attempt at wordplay aside, back to the science.

Over the 15 years since they made the initial announcement, the researchers have been refining both the equipment and the process.  Their main focus is trying to make the device faster, smaller and more accurate.

Right now, it's the size of a shoe box and on par with currently available testing devices in terms of accuracy.  They'd like to get it even smaller and do full clinical testing to make sure the readings are accurate across a wide variety of skin tones.

I hope to hear more about this in the future, so I can pass the news along to all of you.