PERSONA THEME TRENDS WELL-BEING ISSUES RESEARCH NEWSCOPE
LATEST INNOVATIONS! POWERDOT P
owerDot works via a mobile app that uses Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) to activate your muscle fibres, get your body’s lymphatic system flowing and increase the blood flow to targeted areas. Basically, it gets you moving. The result is the creation of a perfect environment for the body to recover faster, feel better and over all well-being. It also allows you to control your workout. An impulse is sent to the pods based on the muscle group you select to target which causes the muscles to activate. The feeling that it creates can be intense and bizarre at first, but you will get used to it in a few uses. It is also compact enough to carry on a holiday or trip and is available from £275 at PowerDot.
NEEDLE-FREE DIABETES CARE: THE FUTURE OF DIABETES SELF-CARE N eedle-Free Diabetes Care is a path-breaking technology currently under development. The best options available today for automating most of the complicated daily process of blood sugar management are continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps however they don’t completely remove the need for skin pricks and shots. The new skin in the game is a technology being developed by Echo Therapeutics (Philadelphia, USA) that would replace the poke with a patch. A transdermal biosensor that reads blood analytes through the skin without drawing blood is what the company is aiming for. The technology puts the patient’s blood chemistry within signal range of a patch-borne biosensor with the help of a handheld electric-toothbrush like device that removes just enough top-layer skin cells. The sensor 32
Volume 3 | Issue 3 | July-September 2018
collects one reading per minute and sends the data wirelessly to a remote monitor. When levels go out of the patient’s optimal range, this triggers audible alarms thus tracking glucose levels over time. There are other start-ups working in the same space as GlucoSense, a spin-
out of the University of Leeds funded by NetScientific is developing a non-invasive device based on photonics technology. Another Dutch start-up called NovioSenseis working on an implantable glucose sensor that uses tear fluid to measure glucose levels.
