[gumby]

> Luckily I'm in the German insurance system... I'm using an NFC chip in my arm giving results to my phone

Poor you. If you were lucky enough to use the greatest health care system in the world, USA, you could also get the Freestyle Libre CGM but would be protected from the NFC data. In the US those data can only be read by a physician; patients do not have access to the readers. Oh I notice the disposable pucks that go on the arm cost more here on Blue Shield than I would have been paying with DKV in Germany.

(Fortunately you can buy the readers OTC in France if you have a friend with a French address and can speak French. Even in Germany you can only the hardware by prescription).

[pimeys]

And xDrip Plus works, if having an NFC enabled Android device. Hardware is by prescription, but if you are able to get the chips, any NFC device works with proper software.

Of course you must know what you are doing. The readings should be calibrated every week with blood, but if you do this, your Android device with xDrip Plus is giving more accurate readings compared to the official reader.

REMINDER

Do not try to do any of this if not knowing what you're doing. There is a risk of dying if you follow wrong readings and take a wrong amount of insulin.

[yourapostasy]

Fascinating work, thank you for undertaking it and sharing your results and code. Have you compared your readings with venous blood draws? I've read that the reason people got excited over Theranos was because they were handwavey promising venous-grade results from capillary fingerstick blood collection. There is a marked difference between the kind of blood collected between the two. I suspect we won't resolve that difference other than through calibration, until we will get to the point where we're directly sampling from implanted devices powered inductively.

[pimeys]

The values from Libre are almost always different compared to the blood from fingertip. But using the great work from the Nightscout community one can calibrate the readings and they are very accurate.

The Libre chip stores 8 hours of measurements from every five minutes and even if the scale is wrong without the calibration the trend is right. It is absolutely useful to always see the trend and being able to react before anything bad happens. xDrip can, when correctly used, estimate how the sugar will react if I now take N units of insulin or eat M carbs.

Officially we will never get anything this nice, but if you're smart, just start building your own system. It takes time and depending where you live lots of money. But if I can understand my body better and I don't need to be afraid that I die at night, it is definitely worth it