Applications

Elevated or low glucose levels in critically ill patients are related to increased mortality and length of hospital stay in adults and children[1]. A better set blood glucose level reduces by more than 30% the risk of critical damage[2]. Therefore, there is an urgent need to constantly monitor blood glucose levels -especially in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients- to allow for a timely administration of insulin or glucose and avoid fatal hyperglycaemic (+130 mg/dL blood glucose) or hypoglycaemic (-70 mg/dL blood glucose) episodes.

Blood glucose monitoring (BGM) is currently made by discontinuous offline analysis. Nurses extract blood, bring them to the lab, blood is analysed and after having the results nurses infuse insulin to the patient to restore to physiological glucose levels (20 min process). This process is recognized as an inefficient use of limited personnel resources. BGM is done intermittently every two hours, consuming 17% of total nurses/technicians working hours with an average cost of +300 € per patient only in man-hours. With more than 14 million critically ill patients being treated at ICUs annually, the global Healthcare system spends 4.2 Billion € in intermittent BGM. Intermittent and low frequency BGM also increases the possibility of glycaemic levels maladjustments between measures, putting the patient’s health at risk. Furthermore, their hospital stay extend 3 days, adding a total extra cost to the healthcare system of 2,638 € per patient[3].