Currently, more than 500 million people live with diabetes, a number that’s expected to more than double to 1.31 billion people by 2050. That’s 15 per cent of the population!
Diabetes causes millions of deaths every year and ranks as the leading cause of blindness. The effective management of diabetes requires frequent monitoring of blood glucose levels. However, existing methods like finger-prick tests and continuous glucose monitors are invasive, inconvenient, and carry a risk of infection.
Despite decades of research, non-invasive glucose monitoring, known in the field as ‘the holy grail of self-diagnostics’, remains an unsolved problem due to the complexity of light-tissue interactions.
Our solution is the Hexamon, a device that uses light ****to measure blood glucose levels in real-time. Our research focuses on detecting the unique way that glucose interacts with light: its optical fingerprint. Our novel method leverages machine learning and specialised hardware to detect this optical fingerprint in three steps:
Our mission is to revolutionise the management of diabetes, empowering patients with a better quality of life and significantly reducing the risk of complications. And this is just the first step of our journey. We will explore the optical properties of other molecules to develop non-invasive diagnostics for a wide range of biomarkers beyond glucose. We envision a future where blood monitoring is as simple as scanning your finger with light. Our technology has the potential to transform the field of diagnostics, and we hope it will set a new standard for accuracy, convenience, and accessibility.