GlucoMON A father's necessity breeds his invention

by David Orenstein free-lance writer

For Kevin McMahon, apparent necessity became the mother of invention when he learned in 2001 that his young daughter had Type I diabetes. After struggling with his family’s sudden plunge into the world of managing the disease, the telecommunications engineer hatched an idea to make glucose monitoring and diabetes care easier. The wireless monitoring system he developed is now the main product of his Dallas-based startup company, Diabetech (www.diabetech.net). His hope is that others in the diabetes community perceive the same necessity for the idea that he does.

The product is the GlucoMON, a hardware add-on to a standard glucose monitor that lets patients connect their monitor to wireless phone networks. The GlucoMON (a docking cradle and a small wireless transmitter) uses bandwidth that the company buys from standard cellular phone and beeper networks to instantly transmit a patient’s blood sugar reading to parties with either email or a phone with text messaging. The parents of a toddler in preschool might choose to have the data sent to their phones, their home email, or even their child’s diabetes educator or physician (if they are willing). The process requires no additional effort beyond doing the blood sugar test itself, which is done exactly the same way as with other monitors.

The GlucoMON encrypts transmissions to meet HIPAA standards and the company uses a protocol—in this case, a method of transmission—that confirms that data has reached its destination. Diabetech custom-designed the system’s wireless hardware, software, and network infrastructure.

Mr McMahon, however, says that none of what he does is technology for its own sake. “It’s not that it is wireless, so much as it is that it’s automatic,” he says. “It is as invisible as it can be—no training required.” The result, he says, is more consistent and reliable data gathering, which can give parents peace of mind and clinicians better information on which to base treatment and advice.

Diabetech also is developing a clinical care management system called GlucoDynamix for physicians and diabetes educators. As the system gathered data from patients with GlucoMONs, it alerted their care providers about possible trouble with patients perhaps even before a crisis erupted, Mr McMahon says. The company hopes to infuse the software with predictive algorithms and disease management protocols that will help clinicians provide better care.

As with any startup, almost everything about Diabetech remains to be seen. Only about 30 GlucoMONs were in use around the country in June, although Mr McMahon projects that the volume will be in the thousands next year. He says he wants to roll the product out carefully and slowly, lest it hit the market with unforeseen problems. The company has been testing the product since late 2002.

The company, which Mr McMahon says has raised more than $2 million in cash and in-kind services, hopes to enter the mass market by partnering with another diabetes company, such as a monitor maker. It is not hard to reach diabetics and their families, he says. He knows first-hand that it is a tight-knit community. He will have to convince them, however, that a GlucoMON is worth $399, including a year of wireless service.

Back in 2001, Mr McMahon conceived of the GlucoMON not as a product that he would have to invent, but as one that made so much sense that it surely already was on the market. As he markets his product today, he’ll find out how many parents are out there like him.

David Orenstein is a technology and business writer in Silicon Valley. To learn more about a technology topic in Computing Care, e-mail him at davealli@comcast.net.