History of Blood Glucose Meters
Diabetes Articles - Diabetes Basics

For those of you, who hate using blood glucose meters to keep your diabetes under control, consider this – glucose meters didn’t used to even exist! Imagine controlling your diabetes through diabetic diet, using diabetic recipes, and exercise alone, with no way of knowing if it’s working without being finely in tuned to how your body normally feels versus how it feels when your sugar is too high or low. The truth is that it has taken over fifty years to develop and produce the glucose meters you use today.

There were two “first” glucose meters that were the beginning of the modern glucose meter. In the 1970s there was the Ames Reflectance Meter, which was first made by Anton H. Clemons. It was about ten inches long, ran on electrical power, and took about a minute to determine the glucose level. The other was used in 1962 in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and was made by Clark and Lyons. This meter was used in conjunction with diabetic diet, diabetic recipes, and exercise, and determined the glucose level by measuring how much oxygen was consumed by an enzyme called glucose oxidase that was placed on an oxygen electrode. These were the forerunners of modern glucose meters.

For type I diabetics, the glucose meter didn’t really appear on the shelves for home use until the 1980s. Before then, the only way to have your levels tested was to visit your doctor, while exercising and using your diabetic diet and diabetic recipes at home, not knowing what affect and how much of an affect it would have on your individual levels. There were two major brands of glucose meter at that time, the Glucometer and the Accu-chek, two brands that are still immensely popular today, and some people even call generic testing equipment by glucometer or Accu-chek even if they are not of these brands.

Testing strips were also widely sold in the 1980s for the first time. These strips changed colors and did not require the battery-powered meter to be read. The strips for diabetic glucose meters and testing were very cheap and could be cut into smaller pieces to extend the life of a set of them. However, glucose meters started becoming more accurate and insurance companies becoming more willing to pay for testing materials, these strips lost popularity and eventually just weren’t sold anymore.

Testing for type II diabetes also goes much farther than diabetic diets and diabetic recipes, or even proper exercise, but glucose meters for type II diabetes has been much more slow going.
 
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