Design of a Simple Glucose Monitoring System Using Arduino for Diabetes Management in Rural Communities in Taraba State

Diabetes management in rural communities of Taraba State is severely hampered by the high cost and limited local availability of commercially imported blood glucose monitors, motivating the development of low-cost locally assembled alternatives. This study designs and evaluates a simple glucose monitoring system using an Arduino microcontroller and a commercial glucose test strip reader circuit for use at rural health posts in Taraba State. The system employs a modified reflectance photometry approach, using a photodiode and LED light source operating at 635 nanometres to measure glucose enzymatic colour change on commercial glucose test strips. The Arduino Mega microcontroller manages LED control, photodiode signal amplification through an MCP6002 op-amp circuit, twelve-bit analogue-to-digital conversion, and a calibration algorithm translating reflectance measurements to blood glucose concentration in millimoles per litre. Output is displayed on a 16x2 character LCD with large font display mode. A micro-lancet port holder ensures standard strip insertion geometry for reproducible measurements. Device calibration was performed against known glucose standard solutions at five concentration points. Accuracy testing on forty capillary blood samples from volunteers at a health post in Jalingo compared prototype readings with a certified Accu-Chek glucometer reference. Mean absolute relative difference was 9.4 percent, with 88 percent of readings falling within the ISO 15197:2013 acceptable accuracy criteria of plus or minus 15 percent. The study identifies haematocrit interference and ambient temperature effects as factors requiring further calibration refinement before clinical deployment. Keywords: glucose monitoring, reflectance photometry, Arduino, diabetes management, Taraba State.