Diabetics have to deal with countless needle sticks or use implants to record their blood sugar. But in the future, none of these methods may be needed. At the largest technology fair in the United States, CES 2022, the Canadian company Scanbo unveiled a device capable of measuring blood sugar using an electrocardiogram and artificial intelligence (AI). You place your fingers on the device for 60 seconds to take your blood glucose reading. Scanbo also uses a photoplethysmogram, which measures changes in blood volume in different parts of the body. According to TechCrunch, the company claims that the device can also perform blood pressure measurements. [3]

Figure 1. Benefits of Scanbo

Figure 1 shows the company has developed a prototype device that combines a three-lead ECG measurement and a Photoplethysmogram (PPG). The 60-second measurement is fed to a set of algorithms that can give you some very promising measurements. For starters, the device is doing non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, but the company’s founder claims that it can also do blood pressure measurements. [2]

Benefits

We believe that Scanbo can play a vital role in realizing the grand vision set forth by India in healthcare, by providing 15 distinct, extremely essential benefits as under:

• Speed of testing: complete 8 diagnostic tests in less than 3 minutes.
• Immediacy of results: : Instant results on mobile app – no more need to go to labs and wait for 1-2 days for results, which elongates time for further medical treatment too.
• Omnipresent reach: This device can be carried in a pocket and be made available even in the remotest Panchayat level areas, where path labs would be many kms. away from such places.
• No skilled manpower required for operating: any layman can do with one-time demonstration and self-explaining processes inbuilt in device.
• Negligible cost / test: Keeping in line with the Scanbo vision to make it affordable even up to the lowest strata of society.
• Unlimited data storage: can maintain records, history and trends forever, on cloud.
• Zero data error: No human intervention for data entry.
• Save considerable money from State Exchequers: By much lower costs of diagnostics and prevention of patients becoming chronic, thus lowering further costs on curative expenditure too.
• Instant reports generation: To the click of a button, at any level of geography / hierarchy.
• Effect of Government schemes on healthcare: It can be mapped simultaneously, with easy sharing of dashboards of progress and impact.
• Very simple and easy-to-use: It is as simple as using a mobile phone and accessing it on mobile.

The ultimate benefits of digitization will be to deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyse the data to create a health index at village-district-state and ultimately at country level. Furthermore, using AI and Machine learning (ML) will help proactively diagnose disease at patient level. [1]

References:

1. https://inspiringinnovations.org/scanbo
2. https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/scanbo-non-invasive-blood-glucose/
3. https://woodzog.com/a-no-needle-device-for-blood-glucose-may-help-many-who-have-diabetes/

Cite this article:

Thanusri swetha J (2021) Benefits of Scanbo, AnaTechmaz, pp. 34