The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 issue 5 (Oct) | Page 15

Industry News
tuations in the levels of blood sugar, we could prevent most of
the problems associated with diabetes.”

avoid long-term complications associated with poor management of the disease, which include heart attacks and cancer.

Google last year agreed to work with Novartis to develop contact
lenses that use tiny sensors to read blood-sugar levels from tears.
Tests on that product will begin next year, according to Conrad. This
August, Google also said it would work with DexCom on a bandagesized sensor connected to the cloud. Sanofi, the maker of Lantus,
the world’s best-selling insulin, will work on new ways of delivering
the hormone, such as Bluetooth-enabled pens that let a physician
monitor how much insulin their patient is using, and when.

“The cost of diabetes is the cost of complications of diabetes,
which is often not treated well enough and early enough,” said
Pascale Witz, the head of Sanofi’s newly-created diabetes and
cardiovascular-care unit.

“That’s the system that we’re endeavouring to build: smart insulin delivery devices, smart measurement devices, with an interface and integrated platform that helps physicians and patients
see how they’re doing,” said Conrad, whose division will be
renamed in the coming months as a unit of Google’s new holding company, Alphabet Inc.
Diabetes, which will affect an estimated 600 million people by
2035, costs about $245 billion a year in the U.S. alone in healthcare resources and lost productivity, according to the American
Diabetes Association.
Google and Sanofi will develop ways to store and analyse glucose levels in real time, enabling patients and their doctors to
respond more quickly to peaks and troughs in blood sugar and

Sanofi last year signed a memorandum of understanding to work
with Medtronic Inc. on developing devices for diabetes, but Witz
said the Paris-based company will no longer pursue that partnership because "we did not feel that it was going far enough."
Patients monitor their blood sugar several times a day by pricking a finger with a needle and dabbing a drop of blood onto
a strip that’s inserted into a meter that computes the level of
glucose -- or sugar. Patients also need to monitor their diet and
exercise regimes and calculate how much insulin they need, a
combination of tasks that means more than half of patients
miss their target levels, according to a 2013 study.
Devices that continuously monitor glucose, and upload that data to
the cloud, will enable physicians and patients “to move away from
the reactive and episodic towards the proactive and preventative,”
Conrad said. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Source: Bloomberg n

Diabetes Tools Acquires
DiabetesGuru Child App
Swedish digital health company Diabetes
Tools, the maker of the TriabetesClinic
online service, has announced the acquisition of DiabetesGuru a smartphone app
for children developed by Shore Innovation AB. This agreement transfers the
rights to Diabetes Tools while still allowing the developer behind DiabetesGuru,
Henrik Sjöstrand, to support the project.
“The deal with DiabetesGuru adds a new
dimension to our digital health product
portfolio,” said Diabetes Tools’ Chief
Executive Officer Anders Weilandt.
“Whereas TriabetesGo, our app for
keeping insulin-dependent children connected with their families and doctors, is
exclusively available from treatment clinics using the TriabetesClinic service, DiabetesGuru is a standalone app and can
therefore be used by children and families when a TriabetesClinic affiliation is
not offered in their local area.”
“I created DiabetesGuru out of neces-

sity to help my young son with his diabetes,” said DiabetesGuru’s developer
and Shore Innovation’s CEO Henrik
Sjöstrand. “Now the app helps hundreds
of insulin-dependent children across
Sweden. Since I do this in my spare
time, now is the right time to move the
app to a more professional setting. I am
delighted that Diabetes Tools has agreed
to take it over. It's a move that will allow
many more families to benefit from the
hard work I have put into it.”
According to the deal, Diabetes Tools
will own the righ