Scientists from the United States are developing an app for the iPhone that helps to assess glucose and sodium levels more easily and accurately for combating diabetes and anaemia, and which also offers a nanosensor ‘tattoo’.
Researchers from Northeastern University are working on an app that would allow diabetes patients to check glucose levels, and help anaemic patients keep an eye on their blood oxygen levels, and can also track many other key biomarkers .
Although the set-up can only currently takes images of the fluorescence, which then have to be examined on a computer, they hope to develop the app to offer easy measurements, with the nanosensors allowing patients to monitor the level of a given drug in their blood in real time, so that more accurate dosing could be achieved.
The tattoo would involve a solution with specific nanoparticles that would be injected into the skin without leaving a visible mark. The nanoparticles would fluoresce when exposed to a molecule such as glucose or sodium, with changes in the fluorescence being detected and tracked by a modified iPhone that can read the tattoos.
The modified mobile phone would have case containing a battery, as well as a filter that fits over the iPhone’s camera and an array of LEDs that produce light to help in the monitoring. The light-filtering lens filters out the light from the LEDs, but not the light emitted by the tattoo.

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