<i>Also, for blood glucose, which diabetics need to monitor closely, there is some buzz now around spectrographic (IR&#x2F;UV) techniques, meaning you don&#x27;t even have to puncture the skin. That would be huge.</i><p>It would be huge, yes.  But it has been &quot;five years away from being available&quot; for about 25 years.  Glucose has a much smaller signal than the Hb &#x2F; HbO2 signal used for pulse oximetry.<p><i>Diabetics actually complain more about fingerprick tests for glucose than about insulin injections, which sounds very counter-intuitive to non-diabetics.</i><p>Most non-diabetics think that &quot;injecting insulin&quot; involves hitting a vein.  That would be far more painful.  Instead, we inject into subcutaneous tissue; and the needles we use are absolutely tiny.  It&#x27;s worth noting that it&#x27;s very unusual to get any bleeding from an injection site.