First-year student Rachelle Milne and Kathryn McElroy, a student of the MFA Products of Design program, are in the process of developing Beegeebee (short for “blood glucose buddy”), a blood glucose monitoring system intended to help young children affected by juvenile diabetes, as well as their caretakers.
Credit: Rae Milne, Kate McElroy
As featured in ARTINFO’s Innovators series, “Redesigning the Way We Save Lives:”
As juvenile diabetes affects 25.8 million people in the United States, two MFA candidates from the School of Visual Arts realized that young children would have more difficulty coping with the alienating effects of the disease. To remedy the problem, McElroy and Milne are in the process of developing Beegeebee (short for “blood glucose buddy”) to give children as young as six years old more independence in the monitoring of their blood sugar and reduce its interference with their everyday lives. The three-part system includes a blood glucose sensor that attaches to the child’s torso and syncs to both a device on the child’s wrist and an app on a caregiver’s smartphone. The wrist device is the true innovation: It consists of interchangeable faceplates of colorful, friendly characters that indicate, in very simple terms, when it’s time for an insulin shot or a snack.
Read more about Beegeegee on ARTINFO.
