It is not uncommon today for people under the burden of a medical condition to be able to manage their illness provided they have the capability to adequately monitor the status of their body.
In many cases the status that needs to be determined can be quantified through the measurement of a bodily constituent by taking a bodily sample, usually in the blood, although urine, saliva or even tissue samples may be used.
One example is the ability of diabetics to manage their condition, either with the use of insulin or strictly by diet, provided they can accurately and frequently quantify the level of glucose in their blood. While much effort in recent times has been devoted to providing diabetics with systems and methods for quickly and accurately measuring the glucose level in their blood, until now other bodily constituent measurements have been outside the province of the individual and require the offices of an institutional participant or medical professional in order to provide a sample and obtain a measurement.
One such health concern, albeit a long term one, is the level of cholesterol in the blood. It is well known that persons have a high level of blood cholesterol are more susceptible to various heart and circulatory ailments than those having a lower blood cholesterol level. Because blood cholesterol can be managed by a person through diet or medication, it is important for a person concerned about cholesterol level to be able to easily, frequently and accurately measure the concentration of cholesterol in his blood or other bodily sample indicative of the blood cholesterol level such as plasma, serum, saliva, urine or skin cholesterol in order to be able to take the appropriate actions to manage the condition.
Blood cholesterol level is one example of a bodily constituent, which is capable of being controlled by individual actions through diet, exercise and the like. It would be highly desirable if an individual could make easy, frequent, and accurate measurements of his blood cholesterol level.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,059,405 to Sodickson, et al., describes a method and apparatus for measuring constituents in a sample that generally requires reaction of the sample on a porous medium with reactants, illuminating the analysis site with electromagnetic radiation and measuring the radiation that is reflected therefrom. While generally utilizing reflectance measurements, a practical non-laboratory device is not taught.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,935,346 to Phillips, et al., describes a method and apparatus for determining the presence of an analyte in a fluid, particularly glucose in the blood. While effective, the device described in this patent requires the use of two light sources and complex, expensive 12 bit digital processing.
It is an object of the invention, therefore to provide an apparatus which is capable of being operated by an untrained individual and provides an accurate measurement of a desired bodily constituent.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an apparatus that requires a minimum number of steps on the part of the individual.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a device having the minimum number of components required to accomplish the objective of providing an easy, and accurate way to measure a bodily constituent level in order that the cost of the apparatus to the user is also minimized.
It is another object of the invention to provide an apparatus that is insensitive to the way in which the individual uses the device and does not require any calibration, timing or treatment of the sample used for the constituent measurement.