Glowcose is Lighting up the Diabetes World 

Seven years ago, Kevin Terry, an embedded systems engineer from Charlotte, North Carolina, realized a need in his life wasn’t being met. After twenty years of living with type 1 diabetes (T1D), Terry’s wife was pregnant with their first child and worried about maintaining a healthy blood sugar during her pregnancy. 

CGM Readings in Color!

Terry is the co-creator of Glowcose, a color-changing light that reads information from a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and displays colors that connect to blood sugar levels. The light updates every five minutes to represent the most accurate blood sugar levels. The light changes to red when blood sugar levels are hypoglycemic (too low), green when blood sugar levels are the perfect time-in-range and purple when blood sugar levels are hyperglycemic (too high). Glowcose works with Dexcom G6, Dexcom G7 and the FreeStyle Libre 3 continuous glucose monitors. 

How it Started

The Glowcose product didn’t initially start as a business venture — but as a passion project for home use. As Terry and his wife tackled the many hurdles that come with any pregnancy, they understood that managing a pregnancy with type 1 diabetes would be a shift for them both.

“At that point, we had begun seeing doctors,” Terry said. “And, you know, they immediately tell you just how serious these two worlds are. One of, you know, creating and having a child, and that coinciding with type one diabetes. So that all of a sudden got really serious for us.” 

Terry, a self-described “fairly anxious person,” found himself setting alarms throughout the night so he could wake up and ensure that his wife’s blood sugar was in a safe range. This habit inspired him to invent the Glowcose product. 

“I would wake up in the middle of the night, turn over, open my phone, unlock it, find the app, make sure everything's good, and then try to fall back asleep,” Terry said. “After a couple weeks of this, I was like, I need to find a better way of doing this.”

So, Terry went to the drawing board, developing a prototype made out of a circuit board and some wires for use in his family's home. Terry settled on creating a lamp to see his wife’s blood sugar levels without having to check his phone. It wasn’t until two years later that Terry started developing the product for commercial use, creating the CGM lamp called Glowcose. 

Building a Company 

Inspired by a suggestion from a friend and future Glowcose founding partner, Michael Bloom, Terry began meeting with Bloom and their other friend, Tyler Baker, to start developing the product. 

“[Bloom] was largely the orchestrator. He said, ‘Hey, we have this cool thing that could help a lot of people,’” Terry said. “If there were ever something to do to try to enrich some lives outside of our own — this might be the thing to do. So that was kind of the impetus.” 

Terry’s household creation became a product to support people living with type 1 diabetes, primarily during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The three men began working together to develop the brand, build a website, and connect with different aspects of the T1D community. 

Baker had a background in the medical space. Working in medical software, his work history spanned across varying sectors of the medical field. 

“I do work with endocrinologists, but I work with all service lines and really work more on the software portion of things and optimizing hospitals,” Baker said. “So I'm very project oriented, but I'm also very customer-based, so I bring a lot of the outbound skills to the table.” 

In addition to having background knowledge of the area, Baker is focused on building up the company and product over time.

“With the support that we do have, how can we automate it in a good fashion, not jeopardizing the user experience, but making sure that their hands are being held and that they're getting the support that they need, regardless of how small of a business we are.”

The World of T1D Tech

The invention of Glowcose came at a time when tech products for people living with diabetes were beginning to crop up more frequently. Also blowing up now on social media sites is the Sugar Pixel, an alarm clock-style gadget released in February 2022 that displays your blood sugar levels in LED lighting across a black background. Similar to the Glowcose, it connects to a CGM to display accurate blood sugar readings. 

Both of these products help T1Ds know their blood sugar levels without the added mental toll of always feeling like they need to be updated on their sugars from an app or device. Glowcose, like the Sugar Pixel and other devices, aims to integrate blood sugar knowledge into daily life without making it a burden. 

Terry recalled the mental toll constantly checking blood sugar levels left on him and his wife. “It became one of those things where it really quickly was pretty consuming both me and her.” 

For people living with type 1 diabetes, the feeling of being overwhelmed that Terry described is most likely unsurprising. 

Combating CGM Fatigue 

As beneficial as CGM devices are, certain elements of always having access to your blood sugar levels can quickly make you feel overloaded. An article published by the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology found that one of the most cited drawbacks of CGMs is the anxiousness associated with constant access to information about your glucose levels. 

But, with products like Glowcose, knowledge about your blood sugar levels sits in the background, or rather, on your desk or shelf, and can alert you to blood sugar levels in a more inconspicuous way. 

“It's there to raise its hand when you need to,” Terry said. “It's kind of calculating in the back of your brain as opposed to forcing you to wait until an alarm goes off.” 

For now, the lamp remains Glowcose’s only product, but the company is looking forward to expanding its work to better support the type 1 diabetes community. 

“[We’re] trying to make something that works for everybody,” Terry said. “Trying to balance various different CGMs and their software, making sure it works with our software, and making sure we have the features that everybody wants.” 

Overall, the men look forward to seeing where Glowcose can go in the years to come. “We made this little gadget, and then now, [we are] kind of watching it grow some legs of its own,” Terry said.