Blood glucose monitoring at home can help you to maintain day-to-day control of your diabetes, detect hypoglycaemia (hypos – low blood glucose levels) and assess your diabetes control during any illness.
If necessary, monitoring can also help you to provide information that can be used by you and your healthcare team to alter treatment to help prevent any long-term complications from developing.
Choosing a meter
Choosing a meter can be quite complex as new products are coming on to the market all the time. Some manufacturers have also produced computer software packages that enable you to look at trends in your blood glucose levels.
All blood glucose meters give a glucose result that is a plasma value. Plasma values are approximately 11 to 12 per cent higher than whole blood values.
| Whole blood result |
Plasma result |
| 4mmol/L |
4.5mmol/L |
| 7mmol/L |
7.8mmol/L |
| 10mmol/L |
11.1mmol/L |
| 15mmol/L |
16.7mmol/L |
What help to expect from your healthcare team
Your healthcare team should help you to understand blood glucose monitoring and assist you with choosing a suitable meter. Also, it's essential that you are taught how to carry out a test properly – poor technique may lead to incorrect results. This could lead to inaccurate medication dosing, and complications going unchecked and being far more serious by the time they're eventually picked up.
Things to consider
When discussing your meter requirements with your healthcare team it may be useful to think about the following points:
- Convenience – consider the size, size of display, weight and test time. You may find some meters suit you better than others.
- Warranty – most meters have a warranty, but the length varies from two years to a lifetime.
- Additional features – virtually all devices can store a wide number of test strip results. Some meters also have an alarm clock option and can operate in a wider temperature range.
Test strips
The strips used with meters are nearly always provided in batches of 50, but check with your healthcare team before choosing a meter.
To be sure of exact details on specific products, telephone the manufacturers' helplines and they will be able to give you more detailed information in relation to all these points.
If you purchase testing strips from abroad or online you must check that they are calibrated to the same UK specifications.
Meters for people with visual impairments
If you have a visual impairment that means you’re unable to use most of the meters for testing, there are some alternatives. Ask your healthcare team for advice.
Talking blood glucose meters
The SuperCheck2 (Apollo Medical Technologies: 01636 831201)
Meters with large, easy-to-read displays and big, bold numbers
The Freestyle Freedom (Abbott Diabetes Care: 0500 467466)
The One Touch Ultra (LifeScan: 0800 121200)
Strips to all these monitors are available on prescription.
If you have a computer with software which translates text into speech, most blood glucose meters allow you to store and download your results on to a PC.
Reviewed November 2012.