Steve Meyer

Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 13 months old, Steve Meyer of Chattanooga has lived through nearly six decades of medical advances that have helped him overcome a doctors' early warning that he might not live past age 18.

The now 57-year-old engineer, who has very few side effects from his disease, recounts that when he was a baby, his mother squeezed urine from his diapers into a test tube, and dropped a tablet into the liquid to estimate his blood-sugar level.

One of four colors that emerged would give a general sense of his blood-sugar level, which indicates how well his body used insulin, a hormone that converts sugar and other food into energy.

"It was a lot of guesswork for my mother," Mr. Meyer said.

Advances in at-home testing have freed many people with chronic conditions from reliance on less precise and more cumbersome technology, experts said. Mr. Meyer got his first home blood-sugar test in the 1970s. The finger-prick test gave a more precise reading compared to the hour lag-time in urine-based tests, he said.

"This was the first numerical control that we had. It revolutionized my daily activities and increased my confidence on doing (active) things I might not otherwise have done," he said.

Below are summaries of advances in different types of home health testing for diabetes and other chronic conditions:

* Home blood-sugar testing. Today, only a small blood sample is needed to test blood sugar, meaning smaller needles and less pain for diabetics, said Jackie Rogers, Memorial Diabetes Educator at Memorial Diabetes and Nutrition Center. "Technology has decreased the sample side to where just a teeny, teeny drop of blood is needed," she said. "People are more willing to check their sugar more often because the meters are convenient, portable, (cause) less pain and give faster results."

* Continuous glucose monitors. In addition to pricking his finger to measure his blood sugar several times a day, Mr. Meyer also uses a continuous glucose monitoring device, which uses a sensor inserted just beneath the skin to get blood-sugar readings every five minutes, he said. The recorded measurements in the sensor can be downloaded into a computer so a doctor can observe glucose fluctuations.

* Insulin pumps. Pumps deliver insulin to a diabetic patient as needed through plastic tubing that is placed under the skin. Most pumps allow the wearer to program the rate of insulin intake for different times of the day or night. The pumps can wirelessly link to a continuous glucose monitor in order to respond to blood-sugar readings in real time, Mr. Meyer said.

* Blood-pressure testing. Dr. Billy Arant, a Chattanooga hypertension specialist, said the major innovation in blood pressure testing came with the home-testing device, developed two decades ago. Though they range in price from $35 to over $100, a basic monitor and regular readings are all that's needed gives a patient's doctors an in-depth look at when blood pressure drops and spikes, he said. The automatic digital monitor, which automatically inflates, deflates and calculates heart rate and blood pressure, made it easier for patients with arthritis who might struggle to manually inflate a cuff that measures pressure, he said.