How would you feel if every time you went to the hospital or clinic or donated blood or wished to monitor your health, there would NOT be any prickly needles poking you to collect a sample of your blood? If recent reports are to be believed, Google has been in the news regarding a patent for a wearable device which allows it to draw samples of blood without the usage of needles.
This patent bearing no.14/289,362 was filed back in May 2014 being published in the Journal recently.[i] As per its functioning, the wearable device first sends an “sudden gush” of gas into a cylindrical container which consists of a micro-particle, then lesions the skin to obtain a small drop of blood. Such an application might be used to draw a small amount of blood, for example, for a glucose test, the patent explains.[ii]
This is indeed a laudable scientific invention owing to the fact that as per current times, diabetic patients are obligated to use a finger prick and use a blood glucose meter several times a day to measure their blood sugar levels. Some of the receivers in the present group of Android Wear smart watches and other fitness tracking devices offer the ability to monitor an individual’s heart rate and also sport feelers for fitness tracking, however, the toting of a “needle – free blood draw”capability could considerably improve the usability of the thingamajig.
Google has numerous other patents and patent applications[iii] smartly targeting the intended market. Furthermore, this is not the first time that Google has vigorously aimed people suffering from diabetes with its inventions as just last year, a research team at Google Life Sciences publicized that it was developing ‘smart contact lenses’ that would enable monitoring of blood glucose levels, as well as another group working on disposable, bandage-sized glucose screens.
Nevertheless this miraculously fast invention hopes to ease the pain, with the underlying magnanimous hope that this Google patent would soon be marketed in shelves.
[i] US Patent Application No.14/289,362, Publication No. 20150342509, Available at: http://uspto.gov/.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Available at: http://stks.freshpatents.com/Google-Inc-nm1.php