Who's the fairest of them all? Good question. With a plethora of options, let's take a look to find the best meter for you. The American Diabetes Association outlined a few key points to consider when choosing a meter. Their criteria includes: insurance, budget, convenience, support and additional features.
First let's address the necessary evils in blood glucose meters: insurance. You can choose a meter only to learn your health insurance will not cover the cost of the meter, or even worse- the strips. So weed out your options first by coordinating with your health insurance provider. Next, assume that your insurance covers any meter, but only covers a percentage (if anything at all) on the cost of strips. Once you've addressed the monetary decisions you are ready to look at the fun part (I do apologize, I use the term fun loosely). These, of course, are the convenience features, including: size of the meter, size of the blood sample, countdown to result, display size, and coding for new strips. The support feature is seldom an issue, but when you need it is when you are most pleased that you have it. Does the meter come with customer support? Last, but not least- the additional feature category. Does the meter offer special alarms to distinguish highs and lows? Does it connect to a PC or perform internal trend analysis? How large is the memory? Certainly this list is not all inclusive, but will guide you on some vague considerations when choosing a meter.
Glucose meters are, quite literally, a dime a dozen. Ladies and gentleman, the world is your oyster. Make this meter market your own and take no prisoners. I know in days to come I will be sharing a few reviews of my own. Tell me what your meter can do. Tell me what it can't do. Tell me what else you want it to do. I'm sure the blood glucose meter powers that be would love to hear what tickles your fancy. Ask and thou shall receive.
1. While I agree with the overall tone of this note, that there is a wide variety of articles with little to choose between them, can I point a disadvantage that they ALL share in common?
All of the meters essentially capture the same information: date/time and blood glucose reading. Some also allow additional information with each reading, but what most of us are interested in are the readings themselves.
And here's my gripe. NONE of the manufacturers make it EASY to get this raw data. First of all, you need to buy a connection cable. Each meter manufacturer has its own version of these cables and they all cost about $30-$50. Then you need to download or buy the manufacturers software, in some cases this is free. In many cases it also costs.
And all this so you can get access YOUR OWN DATA.
When will the meter manufacturers agree on a unified data format, and a unified set of basic commands that can be used to download this data. If they WERE to do this, who knows what might result?
Imagine a world where you could choose from a variety of analysis software that could connect easily to ANY meter.
Then you could readily move from meter to meter and there might be real competition that would encourage the meter makers to start adding features that would REALLY be of use to those of us whose lives depend on meters usability and accuracy.
Posted at 9:33PM on Oct 25th 2006 by Bernard Farrell