Diabetes Design Concepts: Best of the ‘Everyday Ideas’

Following on Monday’s announcement of our 2009 Design Challenge winners, today begins a series of “back-end” coverage of the great variety of innovative ideas we received. Look for more details on our winners later this week.  Grand Prize winners Eric Schickli and Samantha Katz will be here talking about their inspiration for the revolutionary LifeCase & LifeApp system, and their plans to move it forward.

For today, I thought it would be fun to share with you some of the most striking “everyday ideas” we received — some “minor items” that could offer some really big help with our daily diabetes issues.  Here they are, in no particular order:

* Ever wonder just how much milk or juice you’ve ingested? Easy Count Drinking Glasses by Tana Hanson “are designed with ounce marks so that people with diabetes don’t have to measure their beverages in one cup to pour into another cup.”

* Next, Rachel Thursby, whose son has type 1 diabetes, came up with this idea after witnessing police officers tazering an individual because he wouldn’t get out of his truck. “After they had him out, it came to light that he was diabetic and his blood sugar level was down to 11! Now,this individual was wearing a Medic medallion under his shirt. But it was not visible to the officers,” she writes.

In a case like this, you would be blessed to have her Steering Wheel Cover That Could Save Your Life with a medical symbol marked on it. The cover also has a flap that medical/ emergency personnel could lift up to view info on your medical condition, in order to give you the right treatment right away.

* Also in case of lows, the Carb Strip could be simply popped on your tongue, like those fresh-breath strips, in case of a low.  (Video by Amy McAlister not embeddable, but you can watch it here)

A great idea, although one of our expert judges says it’s impossible to get enough carbs into a tiny strip like that to actually treat a serious hypo – grrr!

* On a different note, we all try to be neat, but do you not find your (or your kid’s) used test strips on the floor, couch, laundry basket, car, table, etc.?  The Penguin Topper can help!

All you do is snap it onto an empty test strip canister for easy disposal through the penguin’s mouth. When it’s full, you just snap it apart, throw away the vial, and keep the penguin head for another use.  As ‘lil designer Delaney Dunlap says, “A cool strip company could make a bunch of different colors and animals and give them to kids with boxes of strips — like a happy meal. Collecting and using them would be fun for kids even if poking their fingers isn’t so much fun.”

* And then there are sports, which always bring special challenges for the ladies when it comes to finding the right gear.  Athlete and coach Elizabeth Scanlon has envisioned the Ultimate Sports Bra that would keep your pump battened down to your chest for arms-free athletics.

(Nice video, but we would have liked to have actually seen the bra in action — er, sort of… at least the garment design)

In addition, we got some great designs for “all-in-one” devices, that combine glucometer and injection features for a single “grab-it-and-go” kind of product. More on those concepts here soon.