Smart Insulin PenBy

Devanjan Chayatan Manish

Why? let it be dumb right?

Diabetes has become the fourth

leading cause for global death by

disease, affecting about 246 million

world wide.

Insulin is injected into the body

through an insulin pen, and is the

most common way of insulin intake

amongst diabetic patients.

I still don’t have diabetes, please

tell me how it works!! Insulin pen has a mechanically operated

knob at the top to set the dosage.

After setting the dosage, the insulin is injected into the patients body.

The patient generally loses his sleep due to the fear of missing or over-consuming the dose.

So what is the problem

actually? History suggests that, large number

of people follow an irregular pattern of

dosage intake.

Not maintaining at least a small

interval between two dosages could

lead to a condition known as

hypoglycemea or even cost the

patients their life.

That is actually sad, do we have

a solution for this? YES WE DO!!!!

Our smart insulin pens would take

some help from our phones and

relieve you from the worry of a

mistake in the insulin intake. It

wirelessly transmits your insulin intake

data from your pen to your phone.

Sounds cool, how does it

work? We have designed a sensing mechanism

for the rotation of the knob on top of the

pen.

There is a different voltage that is

obtained from the sensing mechanism

for different amounts of dosage that is

chosen.

This analog signal is converted into a

digital value and a trigger is set up if a

patient tries to take a dosage without

sufficient gap in between the consecutive

dosages.

This trigger is wirelessly transmitted

using a bluetooth module to your

Android phone.

The Android app gives you regular

reminders on your phone about the

insulin intake.

If you have a doubt, you can take the

phone near your insulin pen and the

pen will send information about the

last three dosages that you have

taken.

Can this be better than this?

Of course! Bluetooth Low Energy

technology will make this device

smarter than this.

It will help save a lot of power so that

the module runs on a single coin cell

for nearly an year!

The proximity profile can be used to

give a notification if he is going for a

vacation but unfortunately forgets his

lifeline back at home!

Interesting, how are you planning

to sell it? This can be implemented in two

possible ways.

It can be fitted inside the pen as a

custom PCB before it is manufactured

by making minute design changes in

the pen.

It can be made as an add-on module

and directly made available to end

consumers to buy and fit it on their

pens.

Moral of the story?

We can make a cost-effective module

that can be used by diabetics to keep

a track of their insulin dosages all the

time without really bothering about the

battery life or the size of the pen.

Its simple design makes it user-

friendly and increases its potential to

survive in the consumer market.

Q & A ?