Blood glucose diagnostic systems at point-of-care are a worldwide success story. Yet, all the painless solutions that don't require finger pricking to extract blood are too expensive. At around £60 a sensor, they are too costly as disposable diagnostics suitable for mass population preventative screening.

Our project aims to provide a realistic solution for the first early diagnosis of childhood diabetes. We will fill this technological gap with an affordable, child-friendly, painless patch at a cost comparable to finger prick tests.

The specific technical objectives of CHIRP comprise:

• fabricating a hydrogel microneedle array to extract interstitial fluid from the patient without pain
• developing an application-specific hydrogel formulation
• a Flexible Printed Circuit Board (FPC) compatible fabrication of the microfluidic/glucose sensor platform
• integrating these modules in a proof-of concept conformable prototype