I went to the Diabetic Clinic today and did a test involving my old one touch ultra and the new GlucoRX, the result, which was limited to one test, was fairly surprising.
I purposely tried to get my blood sugar a bit higher than I would usually have it to give a wider possible variance.
The hospital result using their specialist test machine where a sizeable blood sample is taken from the thumb into a fairly large sample tube which does HbA1c, blood fat and current blood glucose. This hospital result was not tested using a common (cheap) blood test meter so should be fairly reliable.
Hospital result of 9.6 mmol/l
One Touch Ultra 9.0 mmol/l
GlucoRx 9.2 mmol/l
By my calculation (which could be wrong) GlucoRx has a 4.2% difference
One Touch Ultra has a 6.3% difference
A few results that I did with both meters from the same blood sample finger prick which are much more varied and no where near as close as the one done in the hospital. However these have no control result to judge them by.
GlucoRx 9.5
OTU 8.4
GlucoRx 9.2
OTU 7.3
GlucoRx 10.3
OTU 8.6
GlucoRx 5.1
OTU 4.4
As you can see, the GlucoRx does read higher than the OTU on every occasion. The difference is very large on some tests.
I have done comparison tests at the hospital in the past using the OTU and the OTU always produced lower results and sometimes fairly significantly for higher blood sugars.
I have one last thing to say about the GlucoRx and it's about the finger prick device. It's fairly good for pain free tests but I found it very poor when using other test sites such as further up the finger. Getting blood from such sites requires it to be set to the deepest setting and pushed hard against the finger, otherwise it is quite difficult getting enough blood. I have never had such problems using the UTO finger prick device.
I did ask tonight at Sainsbury's chemist whether they had the test strips. They didn't have them. There was a problem for my local chemist getting the strips until a week ago. Now they can get them without a problem. I did mention to the Sainsbury pharmacist that my GP would no longer issue the OTU strips so the GlucoRx was the only one's I could get because my GP said they saved the practice £5 per box. Sainsbury pharmacist said they cost £9.95 so the saving is probably more than £5 which is probably why my GP removed the OTU strips from my repeat prescriptions so quickly. If I had to buy them they would be about half the cost.
I would be interested to see other people's experiences of this meter and the results obtained. The previous GlucoRx meter was supposed to be pretty **** so I still have some doubts about it. I think more people will be moved to them as soon as GP's see they can save money. So if you love your current meter, be prepared to say goodbye to it fairly soon unless you are prepared to pay for the strips yourself.
If anyone else gets the chance to compare while they are being switched, please post some results, especially any higher results as those are more likely to vary.
Sorry for the large post, I do tend to waffle a bit. I hope you found it interesting.
