Development of an Automatic Puncturing and Sampling System for a Self-Monitoring Blood Glucose Device

The Importance of Patient and Family Engagement, the Needs for Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose (SMBG) - Our Perspectives Learned Through a Story of SMBG Assistive Devices Made by a Husband of the Patient with Diabetes

Despite some negative reports regarding the need for the self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG), including the issue of cost-effectiveness, there are still many users, and in diabetes treatment, which is largely dependent on the patient's self-care, SMBG remains an important tool in establishing such self-care habits, with several reports supporting this notion. In addition, devices are needed to assist in SMBG for patients with diabetes who have difficulty performing SMBG, such as the elderly or those with visual impairment. In current diabetes care, it is reported that patient-centered care that respects the preferences, needs, and values of individual patients and personalized care that consider the characteristics and comorbidities of each patient are important. Through a case study of a patient with diabetes who had difficulty performing SMBG due to visual impairment, we learned of the needs of SMBG and its assistive devices and the importance of patient and family engagement with emphasis on patient-centered and personalized care. We herein report what we learned through this case in the form of perspectives. Through this report, we hope that medical professionals involved in diabetes care will learn of the importance and needs of these issues and apply them to their actual clinical practice.

Impact of Squeezing Condition to Obtain Sufficient Blood Volume for Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose Using an Automatic Puncturing and Sampling System

Blood sampling for self-monitoring of blood glucose is difficult for the elderly with low dexterity. We developed and tested the utility of an automatic puncturing and sampling (APS) system as a part of an automatic SMBG device, but success rates of securing sufficient blood volume was low (61.9%). Thus, the squeezing condition was changed to increase its success rate. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact to the amount of bleeding by making changes to the squeezing condition. In our previous experiment, blood sampling was performed simultaneously with squeezing, whereas the present study tested blood sampling after squeezing. This method increased the success rate (75%) among eight subjects who had a low success rate (25%) in the previous experiment using the APS system.