Re-Usable BG Strips

[pavmas]

Why Not, i look at my stips and wonder why i cant dip them in a solution and re-use them.
The only thing that stops this from happening is they are programmed one use only.

I can understand the use for one use needles as they get blunt after one use, but cannot for the life of me figure out why i need to use a new strip everytime.

Its money and nothing else, imagine if diabetis was not such a big money spinner then a cure might be found.

diabetis is turning into a money spinner like cancer, cancer research has issued a press release every 5 years since the 70s saying they are only five years away for a cure.

cancer research run Tv adds saying they are finding new cures everyday and help them by paying as little as £2 a months, thats all fine and well but can anybody tell me one cure that has come out of cancer research, every cancer drug that make any difference cost thousands of pounds and people have to fight their local authority for treatment.

So if cancer research is a charity why are all the treatments released by drug companies and not handed to the NHS free by cancer research.

I think they will talk about diabetis being cured every 5 years just like they do with cancer and a real cure will never happen because there is to much money in it.

 

[witan]

Sorry but with the technology used in your portable meters the strips can never be made to work more than once. The strips are impregnated with a chemical (enzyme) that reacts with the blood and when this has happened it can't be used again. There are many other methods of measuring glucose in blood but few that can be minaturised to a pocket meter size and at a low cost - perhaps some of the research funding should go into the commercialisation of other methods - but there is a vested interest by those selling strips to keep that business protected.

The real cost of a strip must be a fraction of a penny at the volume they are produced, of course by giving the meters away (when the meter costs many many times more) the manufacturer guarantees many years sale of the strips that go with it, so makes a bigger profit over a longer period than if he sold the meters at a realistic price with low cost strips.

Another answer would be for manufactturers of generic strips to come into the market and offer them at maybe a quarter of the price and still make a healthy profit. If market forces are fair this should have happened - of course there could be issues of quality and accuracy but these days generic products often surpass the original. So why hasn't it happened??

 

[LittleSue]

Not sure I'd trust the result from a resued strip, I'd wonder if it was affected by the blood from the previous test.

Cancer research isn't just about developing new drugs. Its also about which drugs are best for which specific cancers at which stages, the best order or combination of drugs, whether to give before or after radiotherapy, which is best 'first time around' and which if the cancer recurs, etc etc.

 

[hanadr]

If I accicintally try to put a used strip into my meter, It tells me and WON'T do a reading. They were not designed to be re-usable
Hana