Six times a day, Steven Kelly, a diabetic, pricks his finger, places a drop of blood onto a testing strip and measures his blood sugar.
A bioscience entrepreneurship student at Creighton University, Kelly, 22, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, when he was 3 years old.
In Type 2 diabetes, either the body doesn't produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin. Insulin is necessary for the body to be able to use glucose for energy.
Kelly had grown tired of dealing with inconvenient devices and inaccurate blood sugar readings.
“It's a daily struggle,” he said.
So two years ago, after getting his first Apple iPod Touch for Christmas, Kelly started working on the concept for iDrop, a device that works with the iPod Touch or iPhone to more easily control and track blood sugar levels.
“It's going to change the way diabetics check their blood sugar,” Kelly said. “There's no kit. There's no mess.”
On Thursday, Kelly and his team of fellow Creighton students and two other student groups presented plans for new businesses to about 35 Omaha experts at the Halo Institute, a nonprofit business incubator at 11th and Leavenworth Streets.
The iDrop, a small glucose reader about half the size of a credit card, plugs into an iPod Touch or iPhone to provide personalized glucose readings. The device was well-received by the audience, who cast their votes in the form of donations, rather than ballots.
Kelly and his team walked away from the event with the most votes and money — $860.
Unlike traditional glucose readers, the iDrop is compact and all-inclusive. It holds testing strips and several days' worth of lancets, making it convenient for the diabetic to carry around.
And with a projected price tag of $62.50, the iDrop is less expensive than traditional glucose readers, Kelly said.
Over the next year, Kelly hopes to license the iDrop with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, which has developed a blood sugar testing application, or “app”, for the iPod Touch and iPhone that would work in correlation with Kelly's device.
“Not only is there a really big target market for diabetics, but the iPhone and iPod touch are this new, hip thing,” Kelly said. “If we can take something people are using on a daily basis and if we can combine those, our market span would be huge.”
According to the American Diabetes Association, an estimated 23.6 million people in the United States have diabetes.
Li Bin Cui, a researcher for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, came away from the presentation impressed with the glucose reader. The iDrop has a huge target market, especially if it can expand globally, Cui said.
The two other Creighton groups presenting were RxQuote, a Web site that compares prescription insurance costs, and Guru Instruments, which develops cost-effective medical products such as ergonomic scalpel and forceps grips.
RxQuote Chief Executive Andrew McLaughlin said the online service would produce revenue by collecting commission fees from insurance companies for each transaction processed through the Web site.
Unlike the other two businesses, Guru Instruments CEO Sam Bhatia already has his product on the market. He said the company signed three contracts in its first six months.
Contact the writer:
444-1414, ross.boettcher@owh.com
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