Project description
A smart, painless device to track glucose levels
Only 20 % of the estimated 100 million people who should be monitoring their blood glucose levels (GL) several times a day actually do it correctly. One reason for this is that the monitoring devices used today may cause pain and are too expensive. The EU-funded K’Watch Glucose project will offer a solution to this problem by introducing to the European and US markets a novel monitoring system – K'Watch Glucose. The system, which consists of a smartwatch and a consumable patch, enables minimally invasive, continuous, painless GL self-monitoring. An innovative technology permits high accuracy of GL measurements without blood sampling thanks to a biosensor array made of micro needles. The solution will offer the first convenient, constant GL monitoring method, effectively preventing complications caused by hypoglycaemia.
Objective
Most diabetes preventable emergencies, like severe hypoglycaemia (cost of €1535.8/event in Europe), are linked to a poor self- management. Diabetes management relies on blood glucose (BG) monitoring several times a day. Only 20% of the 100M people that should monitor their glucose does it periodically and correctly. This is caused, partially, by the inconveniences of available self-monitoring devices: these devices are painful, burdensome, and expensive.
We have developed K'Watch Glucose, a minimally invasive glucose self-monitoring system embedded in a smartwatch. Our innovative technology measures glucose levels from extracted interstitial fluid (ISF), without painful blood-sampling and high accuracy (99%). This is possible thanks to SkinTaste®, a patented, calibration-free biosensor array that uses micro-needles (<0.7mm long) to collect and analyze chemical composition of the interstitial fluid. Thanks to its small size, our solution stays “invisible” to others, enabling monitoring of glucose levels anytime and anywhere, without anyone noticing.
In the Accelerator, we will prepare K’Watch Glucose for its successful launch in the European Union and in North America by validating it clinically in our target markets, certifying it as a Class 2 medical device, by pursuing its industrialisation, preparing its reimbursement and establishing a solid commercial network of distributors, insurances and users.
K’Watch Glucose could have a significant impact on preventing avoidable hypoglycaemia episode and its associated complications. Considering that we expect to have 830k active users by the end on our 5th commercialization year, K’Watch Glucose could potentially save around €1.27M per year in Europe and $0.96M in US derived just from preventing severe complications led by hypoglycaemia.
In 5 years from the Accelerator Program, we estimate a cumulative Profit of €201.1M with a ROI of 10.53 besides a clear social benefit with the recruitment of 139 new employees.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorsbiosensors
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineendocrinologydiabetes
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologytissue engineeringartificial pancreascontinuous glucose monitors
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2b - SME Instrument (grant only and blended finance)Coordinator
75001 PARIS
France
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.