Are blood glucose meters for home use acceptable for making appropriate diabetes management decisions?

5 ISSN 1758-1907 10.2217/DMT.12.69 © 2013 Future Medicine Ltd Diabetes Manage. (2013) 3(1), 5–8 Self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) provides significant benefits to both people with diabetes (PWD) and their healthcare providers in a number of ways. SMBG allows for detection of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, as well as gathering necessary information to adjust diabetes therapy to improve glycemic control [1]. Whether or not insulin therapy is used, SMBG has been shown to help PWD to better understand their disease, thus improving their self-care [2–7]. Moreover, the act of a PWD engaging in SMBG can be a motivator toward healthier behaviors [1,8,9]. In addition to assisting PWD and/or their healthcare providers to determine appropriate therapeutic changes (e.g., insulin dosing), blood glucose meter (BGM) results are also used to calibrate continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices. Much of the accuracy of a CGM device relies on the accuracy of the BGM that is used to calibrate it. Therefore, the accuracy of the BGM is of utmost importance. Since BGM results have the potential to affect patient outcomes, it is important for devices used for SMBG to have acceptable performance, that is, to be accurate and precise [10]. Furthermore, while the analytical performance of a BGM under ideal conditions (i.e., in the hands of professionals in a laboratory setting) is important, a BGM system can be used most successfully to manage a person’s diabetes if it is easy to learn, easy to use, easy to maintain, reliable and affordable, as well as accurate in the hands of lay users (i.e., PWD).