Thanks for your interest in our new eco-friendly blood glucose monitor concept. Cost is a valid point and keeping the cost down for both the consumable and durable elements of the system were two of our key criteria in creating this concept.
Although the focus of the project was to design a more environmentally friendly monitor, by reducing the materials used to create the consumables we believe costs could also be significantly reduced. For example, we estimate that the test areas require less than a third of the surface area of a normal test strip – and the lancing parts of the cartridge are estimated to be a tenth of the cost per test compared with a normal single use lancet.
The device is designed to be easy to use and carry around due to its compact size, reduced number of steps per test and having no need to carry test strips, lancets and a separate lancing device in addition to the monitor itself. Once the cartridge has been loaded, the user has 28 tests before needing to replace the cartridge. These tests could be carried out as frequently as the user requires – so a user testing 4 times a day would only need to replace the cartridge once a week.