Painless glucose monitor for children and young people living with diabetes

For children and teenagers with type 1 diabetes, checking blood sugar levels is essential to stay safe and manage their condition. Traditionally, this meant doing painful finger-prick tests several times a day.

More recently, continuous glucose monitors have made this easier by tracking blood sugar levels under the skin using a tiny sensor inserted with a needle every 10 days. However, these devices can still cause discomfort, skin irritation, infections, and sometimes stop working properly.

A new prototype sensor called GlucoPatch-24, developed by our collaborators Transdermal Diagnostics, may offer a better solution. It sticks on top of the skin without any needles, is replaced daily, and has already shown promising results in healthy volunteers.

But it hasn’t yet been tested in young people with type 1 diabetes, who often experience much wider changes in blood sugar levels.

Project aims

This study will test whether GlucoPatch-24 can accurately measure blood sugar levels in children and teenagers with type 1 diabetes.

The prototype sensors will be worn by participants for 10 to 14 days, but it won’t affect their regular diabetes care because they won’t be able to see the results.

We’ll compare the GlucoPatch-24 readings with finger-prick test results and the readings from the continuous glucose monitors the young people already use.

What we hope to achieve

We hope to find out whether GlucoPatch-24 is accurate enough to develop the prototype further. If it performs well, we plan to move on to a larger trial in a real-world clinical setting.

This could lead to a more comfortable, needle-free way for young people to manage their diabetes.