Joel S. Douglas is an American patent agent and business executive who pioneered the first alternate-site glucose meter used to treat millions of Americans affected by diabetes. [1] [2]
Joel S. Douglas is an American patent agent and business executive who pioneered the first alternate-site glucose meter used to treat millions of Americans affected by diabetes. [1] [2]
Douglas graduated from the University of Connecticut with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering in 1977 and earned his master's degree in computer science from the University of New Haven in 1982.
As a program manager at Johnson & Johnson's blood glucose monitoring company, LifeScan, Douglas was part of the team that won the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in 1995. LifeScan was later purchased for $2.1 billion by the global investment firm Platinum Equity in 2018.
In 1996, Douglas and Karen Drexler co-founded the diabetes monitoring company Amira Medical Inc. The company was a privately held corporation with about 160 employees. In 2001, Amira Medical was acquired by the Swiss healthcare company Roche for an undisclosed sum. [3]
In 2004, Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MD+DI) named Douglas as one of the 100 most notable people in the medical device industry. He is the inventor on 103 patents.
Douglas is a member of the University of Connecticut Academy of Distinguished Engineers and currently sits on the board of directors for the National Association of Patent Practitioners. [4]
In 2010, Joel and his wife Heidi established the Joel S. and Heidi S. Douglas Engineering Scholarship at the University of Connecticut. [5]
Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known drugs; today, it sells medical devices, diagnostics, branded generic medicines and nutritional products. It split off its research-based pharmaceuticals business into AbbVie in 2013.
A glucose meter, also referred to as a "glucometer", is a medical device for determining the approximate concentration of glucose in the blood. It can also be a strip of glucose paper dipped into a substance and measured to the glucose chart. It is a key element of glucose testing, including home blood glucose monitoring (HBGM) performed by people with diabetes mellitus or hypoglycemia. A small drop of blood, obtained from slightly piercing a fingertip with a lancet, is placed on a disposable test strip that the meter reads and uses to calculate the blood glucose level. The meter then displays the level in units of mg/dL or mmol/L.
OneTouch Ultra is a blood glucose monitoring device for people with diabetes that is manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. It is the foundation product for LifeScan's OneTouch Ultra family of blood glucose monitoring systems.
Robert Samuel Langer Jr. FREng is an American chemical engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, inventor and one of the nine Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Robert Fischell is a physicist, prolific inventor, and holder of more than 200 U.S. and foreign medical patents. His inventions have led to the creation of several biotechnology companies. He worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory full-time for 25 years and part-time for an additional 13 years. He contributed to APL's satellite navigation work; he later developed a rechargeable implantable pacemaker that could be programmed with radiowaves,. He and his team at Hopkins also helped miniaturize the implantable cardiac defibrillator. Mr. Fischell went on to invent the implantable insulin pump, numerous coronary stents used to open clogged arteries, and two feedback systems that provide early warning of epileptic seizures (NeuroPace) and heart attacks. Fischell recently donated $30 million to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation to establish a bioengineering department and an institute for biomedical devices at the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
Automated insulin delivery systems are automated systems designed to assist people with insulin-requiring diabetes, by automatically adjusting insulin delivery in response to blood glucose levels. Currently available systems can only deliver a single hormone—insulin. Other systems currently in development aim to improve on current systems by adding one or more additional hormones that can be delivered as needed, providing something closer to the endocrine functionality of the pancreas.
Bernard Marshall Gordon is an American engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is considered "the father of high-speed analog-to-digital conversion".
LifeScan, Inc., is a diagnostic systems manufacturer with products focusing on the diabetes market, specifically blood glucose monitoring systems.
Terumo Corporation was founded in 1921 as Red Line Thermometer Corporation by a group of medical scientists led by Dr. Kitasato Shibasaburō to produce medical thermometers in Japan.
Jonathan Marc Rothberg is an American scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for his contributions to next-generation DNA sequencing. He works and resides in Guilford, Connecticut.
Noninvasive glucose monitoring (NIGM) is the measurement of blood glucose levels, required by people with diabetes to prevent both chronic and acute complications from the disease, without drawing blood, puncturing the skin, or causing pain or trauma. The search for a successful technique began about 1975 and has continued to the present without a clinically or commercially viable product.
Helen Murray Free was an American chemist and educator. She is most known for revolutionizing many in vitro self-testing systems for diabetes and other diseases while working at Miles Laboratories. The tests are still marketed today with blood tests as Ascensia Diabetes Care, and urine tests under Siemens Healthineers. The pioneering dip-and-read strips, allowed for testing to be more convenient and efficient, enabling doctors and patients to be less reliable to laboratories for results.
Given Imaging is an Israeli medical technology company that manufactures and markets diagnostic products for the visualization and detection of disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. Until March 2014, it was dual-listed on both the NASDAQ and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, where it was a component of the TA-100 Index and the TA BlueTech Index. In March 2014 it was acquired by Covidien and became a private company. In 2015 Covidien was purchased by Medtronic.
Elron Electronic Industries is an Israeli technology holding company based in Tel Aviv; since 1962 the company has been involved in setting up, funding and developing over 30 companies and is considered one of the foundation stones of the high-tech industry in Israel. The company's sectors of interest include clean technology, software, semiconductors, medical technology, telecommunications, defence and aerospace. Today, the combined annual revenues of the companies established by Elron are approximately $5 billion.
EKF Diagnostics is a publicly listed Healthcare company founded 1990 in Barleben, Germany and currently headquartered in Cardiff, Wales, UK.
Radiometer is a Danish multinational company which develops, manufactures and markets solutions for blood sampling, blood gas analysis, transcutaneous monitoring, immunoassay testing and the related IT management systems. The company was founded in 1935 in Copenhagen, Denmark by Børge Aagaard Nielsen and Carl Schrøder. It has over 3,200 employees and direct representation in more than 32 countries. Corporate headquarters remain in Copenhagen.
Stevanato Group is an Italian multinational company headquartered in Piombino Dese, Padua – Italy. Founded in 1949, it is also active in the glass tube forming technology and inspection systems sector.
Google Contact Lens was a smart contact lens project announced by Google on 16 January 2014. The project aimed to assist people with diabetes by constantly measuring the glucose levels in their tears. The project was being carried out by Verily and as of 2014 was being tested using prototypes. On November 16, 2018, Verily announced it had discontinued the project.
Ron Zwanziger is an American businessman. He is best known for founding and leading the diagnostic test manufacturer Alere.