A newly-invented wristwatch draws blood from the wearer four times a day and tests it for malarial parasites. It’s designed for South African miners, but it could also be useful in South Asia, where malaria is rampant.
Gervan Lubbe has developed the watch which obtains blood samples with a microscopic needle that automatically penetrates the skin twice during the day and twice at nightThe watch takes blood samples with a microscopic needle that penetrates the skin four times a day. An alarm sounds if the parasite count is above 50, before the first symptoms appear… at that point an antidote in the form of tablets should be consumed and, within 48 hours, all traces of malaria are eliminated from the body. Malaria is the single biggest killer on the African continent, claiming close to three million lives a year. [Link]“If you wait until you get symptoms and a malaria diagnosis, you can be in bed for six months and have to take huge quantities of quinine, which can be dangerous…”[Link]
It even has a remote data feed:
With the wristwatch, each miner will walk through a scanner, similar to a metal detector, and the watch’s radio frequency will transmit the wearer’s information to a central computer.
And, just like cleaning out the filter on a clothes dryer, you have to do something with all the blood. Anne Rice should be all over this:
… the watch’s alarm rings every 35 days to remove the small metal sieve and wash the old blood away. [Link]
India still suffers ~2 million malarial infections a year:
According to the World Health Organization, every year in India an estimated 2 million cases of malaria occur, with 1,000 deaths; and 95% of the population live in malaria-risk areas. [Link]
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be too excited about something clingy that drew blood at will. That’s called ‘marriage.’ A wrist-mounted glucose meter for diabetics pioneered a much less invasive way to cross the skin barrier:
The GlucoWatch is worn on the wrist and sits on top of a disposable gel disc containing the same enzyme used to monitor glucose levels in home monitors. Instead of testing blood directly, it draws glucose into the disc using a tiny electric current flowing between two terminals beneath the watch. Charged molecules move towards the electrodes as the current passes through the skin, dragging glucose molecules along with them. [Link]
And I could see an STD test on your wrist being useful in certain cities 
At the end of the day, the wristwatch may be too James Bond, and a lower-tech approach might work better:
The theory is simple: find fish which like eating mosquito larvae and put them in ponds, rivers and wells where mosquitoes lay their eggs… Introducing fish like guppies, he said, was one of the main reasons why the number of malaria cases each year in India was falling. [Link]
