[From the last episode: We reviewed our communications discussion as it comes to a close, at least for now.]

Before we launch into our next general topic – securityRefers to whether or not IoT devices or data are protected from unauthorized viewers. – I thought it interesting to bring you yet another example of IoTThe Internet of Things. A broad term covering many different applications where "things"  are interconnected through the internet. technology in action. This particular one comes to us from a conference I attended late last year. It’s called the MEMS and Sensors Executive Congress. As the name suggests, it brings together the higher-ups of companies making sensors, many (but not all) of which use MEMS technology (which we have already looked at).

One of their featured events is a Technology Showcase, which brings five different representatives of five different new companies looking for… funding, alliancesA group of companies working together (in an anti-trust fashion) to promote a particular protocol or set of protocols. They’re like a standards body, but they don’t have the official imprimatur of a standards body., exposure, whatever presenting their wares to this audience might bring.

We’re going to talk about one of those companies. In fact, this was the winning presentation – it got lots of resonance from the audience. It’s in an area we haven’t looked at much: medicine. Developers are working on a whole raft of different medical devices that take advantage of IoT notions of connectivityThis refers to some kind of electrical connection. It might be through a network cable, a cable connection, a wireless connection, or a phone - just to name some options. The connection might be to the internet or to some other local device. and sensing – and perhaps even actuatingA way of controlling some device electronically. It might turn the device on or off or change a setting or property or do any other thing that the device is capable of.. This is one of them.

Checking Sugar Levels

The company name is Alertgy, and their focus is on glucose monitoring for Type-2 diabetics. Yeah, there are lots of glucose monitors already out there, but they fall into one of two categories:

• Monitors that require a blood sample, meaning a finger (or something) prick. This is referred to as an invasive approach – since that pin prick breaks through your body’s protective layer – the skin.
• Monitors that are non-invasive, meaning they don’t need a pin prick. But these ones don’t measure blood glucose directly. Instead, they measure so-called interstitial glucose – in fluids right below the skin. This isn’t the same as blood glucose, but it does relate to blood glucose. But the founder of this company, Marc Rippen, wasn’t satisfied that it was the best that could be done.

So he studied the literature and developed a way to measure actual blood glucose without breaking the skin.

Checking the Spectrum

He’s using a well-known methodology, although it hasn’t been used for this before. It’s got a million-dollar name, dielectric spectroscopy. Without going into crazy detail, the gist of it comes from the “spectroscopy” part.

When you shine a light on something, the materials in that something absorb some of the light and pass other parts of the light. Heck, that’s why you see colorful objects that you illuminate with white light. If that object looks blue, that means that the material absorbed all the colors from the white light except for the blue light, which it reflects back to your eye.

But spectroscopy is rather more precise than that. You may remember from high-school science that we have learned what different stars are made of by looking at the frequencyThe rate of change of a signal, specified in hertz, or cycles per second. content of their light. If there’s hydrogen, for example (which there most likely is), then, if you look at the spectrumA range of frequencies. A prism shows a range, or spectrum, of visible light frequencies (yes, light is a wave). This is the literal definition of spectrum. Other uses – like references to the autism spectrum use the word figuratively to indicate a continuous range. In our context, this refers to the range of radio frequencies available for communication. Access to those frequencies is usually regulated by governments since they're viewed as a public asset. where all the light frequencies get spread out, you’ll see that there is are lines at specific frequencies. Each line indicates that there is light getting to us of that frequency – and, here, you can think of frequency as color (even though many times they’re outside the visible range of light).

The idea is that each material has a particular set of lines – called absorption lines when they indicate light that the material has absorbed or emission lines when they show light that the material emits – and those lines are a kind of signature. Given a mix of materials, you might be able to separate out the different signatures to figure out the contents.

From Stars to Blood

So let’s take that general notion and apply it to the glucose problem. You shine light through a finger and look at how that light is absorbed – or not. From the specific signatures that the device detects, it can tell how much glucose is in the blood.

They make a specific point about this being for Type 2 diabetics rather than Type 1. I asked him about this, since I figured that glucose is glucose, regardless of the type of diabetes. And it turns out that that’s right. It’s not that it can’t measure glucose for someone with Type 1 diabetes – or, heck, even for someone without diabetes.

According to Mr. Rippen, the issue is that the monitors used by Type 1 diabetics do more than just measure the glucose: they also recommend an insulin dose. For a machineIn our context, a machine is anything that isn't human (or living). That includes electronic equipment like computers and phones. to do that, it needs approval by the FDA. This is a common theme with medical technology: anything requiring FDA approval takes longer and is more work. So, if at all possible, folks market devices for uses that don’t require approval. It’s not that Alertgy can’t also apply for approval – they may or may not do that in the future. But, for the time being, they’re at least getting started by focusing on and marketing to Type-2 diabetics.

You can find more about them at their website.