Successful first idea
Today was a landmark day in the development of the development of our product. We obtained a vial of over-the-counter insulin (who knew?) and ran a bunch of tests and collected a lot of usable data for the project. After a bunch of trials, it was clear that the presence of insulin on the skin caused a significant effect on the resistance and conductivity of the sample. The main problem was finding a way to use that information. Constructing a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor to sense this change was the next logical step, but we ran into some problems…
After many attempts at constructing the allegedly simple sensor to no avail, we began to ponder some second or third ideas about how to create the patch that would alert a patient to a defective insulin pump insertion. The color changing patch was reemerging as a potential solution to our problem. While researching this, though, a partner (s/o Neeraj) fixed our problem and finished our first prototype of an insulin sensor for use in our patch.
While there were many successes today, not all of our tests produced usable results, as our attempts to quantify the amount of insulin lost to tunneling was a big failure. The silicone sample that we attempted to inject into was too firm to accurately represent tissue, so we now have to pivot and find some other material to help us gather this important information.
-Dan
BME Design 