Soenksen, L. R. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2018

GlucoPush: A Do-It-Yourself Add-On for Online Tracking of Personal Glucometer Use

Current public health guidelines on diabetes management recommend frequent self-monitoring and physician tracking of blood glucose to reduce complications caused by this condition. While Internet-of-Things glucometers exist to aid in this goal, most commercial glucometers seen in wide-spread use worldwide do not provide these online tracking capabilities or allow for convenient data sharing with health care providers. This situation is caused, among several factors, due to premium pricing of IoT glucometers and resistance from older users to dispose of their previous glucometers. We propose an add-on strategy to enable IoT integration in glucometers to increase the use of wireless connectivity features in this sector. Here we describe and test a simple do-it-yourself system fabricated with low-cost commercially available wireless connectivity components that aim to demonstrate this IoT augmentation strategy to track glucose readings from previously unconnected standard glucometers.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2017

MICCS: A Fully Programmable Multipurpose Integrated Cell Culture System

With the rise of research utilizing microphysiological systems (MPSs), the need for tools that enable the physiological mimicking of the relevant cellular environment is vital. The limited ability to reproduce crucial features of the microenvironment, such as surrounding fluid flow and dynamic changes in biochemical stimuli, severely limits the types of experiments that can be carried out. Current equipment to achieve this, such as syringe and peristaltic pumps, is expensive, large, difficult to program and has limited potential for scalability. Here, we present a new pumping platform that is open-source, low-cost, modular, scalable, fully-programmable and easy to assemble that can be incorporated into cell culture systems to better recapitulate physiological environments. By controlling two commercially available piezoelectric pumps using a Raspberry Pi Zero microcontroller, the system is capable of producing arbitrary dynamic flow profiles with reliable flow rates ranging from 1 to 3,000 {micro}L/min as specified by an easily programmable Python-based script. We validated the accuracy of the flow rates, the use of time-varying profiles, and the practicality of the system by creating repeatable dynamic concentration profiles using a 3D-printed static micromixer.

bioengineering↗