For a diabetic patient in a hospital’s intensive care unit, frequent monitoring of blood glucose levels is necessary and painful.
For a diabetic patient in a hospital’s intensive care unit, frequent monitoring of blood glucose levels is necessary and painful. With every glucose check, a patient’s finger has to be pricked. In an ICU, this can happen three times an hour, which adds up to 72 pricks a day.
Chris Condit, an M.S. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering graduating in May, wants to fix that.
Chris Condit and Austin McElroy at the poster symposium.
"Forty percent of ICU patient deaths can be prevented with more accurate glucose-level monitoring,” said Condit. “The device we’re working on measures glucose levels via an IV. It is an attempt to ease patient discomfort while at the same time improving health care worker time management."
Condit presented research he is conducting in Professor Tom Milner’s lab on a fiber optic device that measures glucose levels in real-time at Hook the Cure’s 2nd Annual Diabetes and Cardiovascular Health Awareness Conference held on Tuesday, March 29, at the Biomedical Engineering Building.
Hook the Cure, a diabetes awareness organization founded by undergraduate students at The University of Texas at Austin, sponsored a poster session, free health screenings for blood pressure and glucose, a speaker panel that included physicians, dieticians, and pharmacists, and a benefit dinner. Proceeds raised money for the Auxanomen Clinic, a nonprofit in south Austin providing diabetes care for the uninsured and under-insured individuals and Camp Bluebonnet, a summer camp where diabetic children are able to learn about managing their disease in their daily lives.
In addition to Condit, other participants from the Biomedical Engineering Department included Sujata Ghosh, president and co-founder of Hook the Cure, and Oscar Ayala, Hook the Cure vice president and co-founder.
Sujuta Ghosh, a senior, says this year’s conference was a success.
“We had more participation from the UT community and were able to successfully sponsor the entire event ourselves. We had about 20 presenters and speakers, and the conference took a multidisciplinary approach with participants from the School of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, and Department of Kinesiology.”
Hook the Cure also participates in the annual Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Walk to Cure Diabetes and Diabetes Awareness Week.
