Japan's Hitachi Ltd will enter the growing market of home medical care products next year, launching a device to gauge blood sugar levels of diabetic patients without drawing their blood, a report said Sunday.
The major electronics company, which has developed mainly hospital-use products, will focus on home-use devices, targeting sales of 15 billion yen (138 million dollars) in 2007, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.
Hitachi aims to obtain authorisation to sell the new device for diabetics in Japan and the United States in 2005, the economic daily said.
The device would make life much easier for diabetics as conventional products require users to take blood samples up to several times a day, it said.
A diabetic simply has to put one finger on the new device for about four minutes, as it gauges blood sugar levels using a temperature/optical sensor capable of measuring hemoglobin content, blood flow and other data, it said.
No Hitachi official was available to confirm the report Sunday.