Bayer Contour USB meter big step forward for design
Bayer USA sent me one of their Contour USB blood glucose meters to review some time ago. For me the summary is easy: this is a great meter with slim design that's easy to use. I like it a lot. Read on for the details and lots of pictures.LifeScan created a buzz when they released the OneTouch UltraMini a few years ago. Given their sizes, looking at the two meters together is a good way to get a quick comparison point. In the picture both meters have a strip inserted and are prompting for a blood sample. Note the Contour uses standard strips that need a 0.6 microliter drop of blood, by comparison the OneTouch needs 1.0 microliters. Both meters provide results in 5 seconds. The Contour meter is auto calibrated with each strip, while you have to calibrate the OneTouch meters each time you get a new batch of strips.
I'm comparing the readings with my WaveSense Jazz meter, and they are usually within about 10% of each other. So I believe the Contour USB accuracy is good. I need to use the meter over several A1C tests, to do a real comparison.
The color is really eye catching, and the text is very readable. Here's a picture of the Contour USB meter showing a low blood sugar reading of mine.
The designers have used this high resolution screen and color very effectively. When your BG is lower or higher than a range that you set, the result is displayed in an salmon color.
One the right hand side of the meter are three buttons, in the picture above they're between the column reading Reminder|Notes and the Bayer symbol. You can press the button to set a reminder for a later test, or to add some basic notes from a small selection list.
The next picture shows the meter immediately after you apply a blood sample. You're prompted to mark the reading as before or after a meal, or just to continue on to the results. While you're doing this, the result is being calculated. So this step makes the whole thing seem faster.
And don't worry, if your blood glucose is out of range the meter won't wait longer than 5 seconds (time to calculate result) for you to make a choice, it will just display the value.
In case you're wondering where the USB part of this meter is, here's a picture.
The meter has a rechargeable battery that gets powered up whenever you connect it to a standard USB port. They also provide a standalone charger you can plug into an standard outlet (which also works for charging an iPod).
One last picture. If you're testing in the dark, it's really easy to see the results on the screen. But you know how difficult it can be to get the strip into the meter and a sample on the strip. If you click the button at the top of the meter (not visible in my photos) twice, then the area to insert the strip lights up. Note I deliberately took this picture in low light conditions to show you the overall results.
Bayer arranged for me to talk with Rick Case, the project director, and Eric Nelson. These folks were leading the design team, which was completely within Bayer. We had an interesting discussion about product design and some technical issues.
Their target audience for this meter was people in their late teens or early 20s. (Which means that folks like Bennet and me can't get too excited about it!)
They wanted to get the product into the market, so initially it's only in black. But they're considering different meter colors and hope to have these available before too long.
If you use the GlucoFacts software that's provided on the meter itself, it doesn't actually remove the readings off the Contour USB. As the meter holds 2000 readings, you'll get almost a year's worth of readings if you're testing 6 times a day.
You can register at the Bayer site and download a different version of the GlucoFacts software that does take the readings off the meter. The built-in software doesn't allow you to manually enter new values, or A1C readings, but the installed version does. Both pieces of software are written in Java and run on Windows and Mac operating systems.
Because of speed to market, they purchased an off the shelf charger. When you use it, the meter is facing away from you, a minor annoyance. They plan to fix this in later models.
They are reading the sites of many diabetes bloggers, so they're taking note of suggestions and complaints for future versions of their products. One suggestion from me is to enable me to download the readings in some standard format (CSV), so I can look at them using other software. I hope the next version will also include an ability to upload readings to a central server like the MyGlucoHealthMeter.
For the first meter from this team, I think Bayer have done a superb job, and I'd recommend having a good look at this meter.
FYI: The User Guide(PDF) is available.
Final pictures:
A graph from the GlucoFacts software showing blood glucose readings over several days.
Summary of blood glucose readings with some statistics below it.
Summary of readings with a pie chart.
Labels: Bayer, contour, contourusb, design, diabetes, meter
posted by Bernard @ 6:39 PM
9 Comments:
Cool! My insurance gives preference to another company, but that is something I will keep in mind for the future (will be switching insurance companies as soon as I find a new job).
I really like the look of the display.
Do you know how it's accuracy compares in terms of how many filters are built into the test strips, compared to the aviva and the wavesense?
I'm really excited about this. I'd love to try and get one over here in England. Should make getting data from the reader a whole lot easier!
George.
To date, there have been few meters I've been ready to switch brands for. I once had their plug-in for the once-Palm competitor Handspring, which I liked, but I hated the Freestyle test strips enough to stop using the device. But this product's size and functionality is enough to tempt me to try switching brands once again. The price needs to come down just a tad, though!
Now we just need to get Minimed to enable upload to CareLine from this meter.
Thanks Bernard, this looks like a great option.
I have to agree - this is the first meter that has me excited. Caleb was presented one by Nick as part of his Simple Wins prize and it is a very nice meter for so many reasons - beautiful screen, compatible with Mac, sleek design, assorted colored lancets (ok that's not all that exciting, but adds to the overall impact :)). It's like a mini computer. I have yet to download the data, but hope to soon. Thanks for the write up Bernard - very thorough as usual!!
Hey wait that is exactly the demographic I get excited about the T1 in my clan are 12 to 16.
That demo is where they are going.
I agree Bayer did a great job. There are some things they need to work on.
As I understand it the software runs in Java but it has issues with the current version of Mac's operating system and from what some of the comments at YDMV say also with windows 7.
You know I am all in favor of a standardized data format. Sadly there isn't one.
Color cases are actually a big issue in our house. With tow T1 kids it is hard to keep track of who's meter us who's.
Jonah, I don't know about any filters built in to the meter like the WaveSense ones. I'll see if I can get an answer to that, my guess is that it's using the same technology as other Contour meters.
George, one issue right now is that the data can't easily be extracted from the meter. They'll let you print a PDF report, but not download the values. I think you can get the value if you install a separate version of their GlucoFacts software, I'll have to check that out.
Scott, price is high and the strips are typically not covered with a lower co-pay. I think that'll be a barrier to folks moving over to this meter.
Bennet, I missed those comments about software incompatibility, thanks for pointing them out. I'll have to update the review about the meter case, I forgot how ugly/large it is.
GREETINGS,
I appreciated this review and now I own one of the meters. I like it but for one serious issue. I used to keep track of many things on my paper log book and I thought I could be shed of that with the electronic version.
First, it is disappointing that you cannot add your own notes to the machine itself. I cannot almost understand that as they don't want us messing up the works. But....
Second, why on earth can you not annotate the reports? Adding things like weekly result on the scales - trips - amount of insulin taken - etc. etc.
I suppose that if I buy the full pdf program for several hundred dollars, save the reports in pdf, then I could put in annotations. I don't think this would be a big programing issue for Bayer.
By the way, the Bayer website cannot recognize recent log in names or passwords. The outsourced "help" dude in Manilla had no idea it might be before I could log back in.
THH - TYPE 2 - 67 YEARS YOUNG
Bennet said...
You know I am all in favor of a standardized data format. Sadly there isn't one.
totally agreed. However not being daunted i snooped around. Turns out there is a log file *install dir*\GLUCOFACTS Deluxe\logs\bmi.log which has an ascii version of the readings it imported.
I popped the selection into notpad did some search/replace until i got a vertical bar seperated list for import to Excel.
After a few date time exel funtions to tranform YYYYMMDDHHMM format i was able to create custom graphs of the data.
pretty cool
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