Vet-Tab is an at-home, smartphone based painless glucose test for a beloved family member, a diabetic dog.
The purpose of a glucose monitoring system is to help you, a diabetic dog owner, to regulate your dog’s glucose level. Many pet owners dislike lancing their dogs to draw blood to monitor their pets’ glucose with portable blood glucose meters (“PBGM”). They inject insulin daily without testing their pets glucose, which can be dangerous to you dog’s health.
Vet-Tab is an at-home, glucose monitoring system allowing you to painlessly test your dogs saliva to monitor its blood glucose level with a tab and your smartphone. Saliva is collected on the tab, which turns a color based on the level of glucose. A smartphone app captures an image of the tab, similar to capturing an image of a check to be deposited. The app analyzes the image and displays a blood glucose result on your phone.
Many pet owners monitor their dogs’ glucose using Vet-Tab, which is significantly better than not monitoring glucose at all. In addition, monitoring your dog at home in a low stress environment can provide more accurate results than testing in a veterinary practice where stress raises your dog’s glucose level. When the result displayed is 80 or below, 350 or above, a message on the phone display advices you to contact your veterinarian for professional advice.
If you choose, a chart of your test results can be emailed from the app to your veterinarian. Your veterinarian can better regulate your dog’s glucose comparing your at-home test trends with clinical tests they perform in their clinic.
VET-TAB IS A WIN/WIN/WIN SOLUTION
- Your dog is healthier.
- You do not need to lance the dog to draw blood to monitor its glucose.
- Your veterinarian receives your at-home test results to help better regulate your dog.
VALIDATION OF THE VET-TAB SYSTEM
Development of the Vet-Tab system began in the summer of 2017. Since then thousands of tests on diabetic and non-diabetic dogs have been conducted by Dr. Rebecca Silveston-Keith, Chief Technology Officer, and the technical team in 20 veterinary practices in South Carolina and Georgia. The results of these tests have been reviewed with Dr. Delphine Dean, Gregg-Graniteville Professor of Bioengineering at Clemson University; Dr. David Dawkins, a veterinarian at the Eastside Animal Hospital in Spartanburg, SC; and Dr Cynthia Ward, VMD, PhD, DACVIM, Professor of Internal Medicine University of Georgia College of Veterinary Science
Field trials validated the accuracy of the Vet-Tab Glucose Monitoring System throughout 2018 with 150 dogs and culminated with a month long study of 54 dogs in participating veterinary practices. Nine dogs were disqualified because of interference factors, discussed below. Blood glucose determined by Vet-Tab was compared to the measurement of blood glucose by lab tests. Literature reporting data from the determination of glucose by continuous glucose monitors measuring interstitial fluid relative to blood tests for diabetic pets showed a similar level of accuracy as the Vet-Tab data. Continuous glucose monitors are well accepted devices for monitoring blood glucose in diabetic patients.
The accuracy of the Vet-Tab system is sufficient for its use in at-home, glucose monitoring of diabetic dogs.
As is true with other glucose monitoring systems, there are factors that interfere with the Vet-Tab system. We have incorporated features into the system to address the first two of these factors.
Vet-Tab is not reccommended for pets taking the following medications: Gabapentin, Fluoextine, Alprazolam, Tramadol, or LThyroxine. Contact [email protected] of you have concerns about other medications