Diabetes Technology Blog: December 2009

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Bayer Contour USB meter big step forward for design

Bayer USA sent me one of their Contour USB blood glucose meters to review some time ago. For me the summary is easy: this is a great meter with slim design that's easy to use. I like it a lot. Read on for the details and lots of pictures.

LifeScan created a buzz when they released the OneTouch UltraMini a few years ago. Given their sizes, looking at the two meters together is a good way to get a quick comparison point. In the picture both meters have a strip inserted and are prompting for a blood sample. Note the Contour uses standard strips that need a 0.6 microliter drop of blood, by comparison the OneTouch needs 1.0 microliters. Both meters provide results in 5 seconds. The Contour meter is auto calibrated with each strip, while you have to calibrate the OneTouch meters each time you get a new batch of strips.

I'm comparing the readings with my WaveSense Jazz meter, and they are usually within about 10% of each other. So I believe the Contour USB accuracy is good. I need to use the meter over several A1C tests, to do a real comparison.

The color is really eye catching, and the text is very readable. Here's a picture of the Contour USB meter showing a low blood sugar reading of mine.

The designers have used this high resolution screen and color very effectively. When your BG is lower or higher than a range that you set, the result is displayed in an salmon color.

One the right hand side of the meter are three buttons, in the picture above they're between the column reading Reminder|Notes and the Bayer symbol. You can press the button to set a reminder for a later test, or to add some basic notes from a small selection list.

The next picture shows the meter immediately after you apply a blood sample. You're prompted to mark the reading as before or after a meal, or just to continue on to the results. While you're doing this, the result is being calculated. So this step makes the whole thing seem faster.

And don't worry, if your blood glucose is out of range the meter won't wait longer than 5 seconds (time to calculate result) for you to make a choice, it will just display the value.

In case you're wondering where the USB part of this meter is, here's a picture.

The meter has a rechargeable battery that gets powered up whenever you connect it to a standard USB port. They also provide a standalone charger you can plug into an standard outlet (which also works for charging an iPod).

One last picture. If you're testing in the dark, it's really easy to see the results on the screen. But you know how difficult it can be to get the strip into the meter and a sample on the strip. If you click the button at the top of the meter (not visible in my photos) twice, then the area to insert the strip lights up. Note I deliberately took this picture in low light conditions to show you the overall results.

Bayer arranged for me to talk with Rick Case, the project director, and Eric Nelson. These folks were leading the design team, which was completely within Bayer. We had an interesting discussion about product design and some technical issues.

Their target audience for this meter was people in their late teens or early 20s. (Which means that folks like Bennet and me can't get too excited about it!)

They wanted to get the product into the market, so initially it's only in black. But they're considering different meter colors and hope to have these available before too long.

If you use the GlucoFacts software that's provided on the meter itself, it doesn't actually remove the readings off the Contour USB. As the meter holds 2000 readings, you'll get almost a year's worth of readings if you're testing 6 times a day.

You can register at the Bayer site and download a different version of the GlucoFacts software that does take the readings off the meter. The built-in software doesn't allow you to manually enter new values, or A1C readings, but the installed version does. Both pieces of software are written in Java and run on Windows and Mac operating systems.

Because of speed to market, they purchased an off the shelf charger. When you use it, the meter is facing away from you, a minor annoyance. They plan to fix this in later models.

They are reading the sites of many diabetes bloggers, so they're taking note of suggestions and complaints for future versions of their products. One suggestion from me is to enable me to download the readings in some standard format (CSV), so I can look at them using other software. I hope the next version will also include an ability to upload readings to a central server like the MyGlucoHealthMeter.

For the first meter from this team, I think Bayer have done a superb job, and I'd recommend having a good look at this meter.

FYI: The User Guide(PDF) is available.

Final pictures:
A graph from the GlucoFacts software showing blood glucose readings over several days.