Israel’s DarioHealth has created a user-friendly lifestyle product to help people with diabetes manage the illness. The pocket-sized Dario system holds components including test strips, a lancing device and a glucose meter that plugs into your phone’s headphone jack.
As reported in Israel21C:
The digital glucose monitor combined with a free smartphone app lets users set up a personalized diabetes profile; record real-time blood glucose measurements, physical activity and carb and insulin intake; get alerts to abnormal results; and compare and share the data.
When you open the Dario app, it prompts you to insert a test strip into the meter. The reading appears immediately, with no delays as might happen with a Bluetooth- or 3G-enabled glucose monitor.
“I think this is super cool,” says Diabetes Dominator blogger Daniele Hargenrader. “I think it’s a great tool, especially for people who want to have all that information at their fingertips to provide to their healthcare provider or anyone else.”
She also praised the product’s durability and ease of use. “This meter requires the least amount of blood that I have ever encountered, by far,” Hargenrader reports in her review of Dario.
Based in Boston and in Caesarea, Israel, DarioHealth has regulatory approval for its Smart Diabetes Management Solution in Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States.
After receiving FDA approval for iOS, the device launched in the US last March and has sold about 10,000 units. FDA approval for the Dario Android app is expected in early 2017, says CEO and Chairman Erez Raphael.
The product is multilingual and the app can be set to English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian or Hebrew.
The startup is led by people from the medical devices and software industries.
DarioHealth generates revenue mainly from test strips, similar to companies that make profits off razor blades rather than razors. In Australia, people with diabetes receive test strips free by prescription, so Dario users pay only for the device.
According to Diabetes Australia, an estimated 1.7 million Australians suffer from the chronic condition.
Israel Trade and Economic Commission in Sydney, Australia 