Glooko raises $3.5M to sync diabetes glucose meters to iPhone app

Glooko has raised $3.5 million in a new round of funding that will enable it to release new versions of its solution to help people with diabetes monitor their glucose intake more easily.

The round was led by The Social+Capital Partnership along with existing investors. The company’s product is one more example of the “quantified self” trend, where people can gain self-knowledge through quantification of the things they do in life.

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About 25 million people live with diabetes in the U.S. People with diabetes can’t properly process sugar their blood because their bodies can’t make enough insulin, which bonds with the sugar and turns it into fat. Patients need to inject themselves with synthetic insulin several times a day to keep their blood sugar under control. If they have too little or too much sugar in their blood, the results can be incapacitating or life threatening.

Many people use glucose meters to monitor their sugar intake. The Glooko MeterSync Cable plugs into most standard self-monitoring blood glucose meters and then syncs the data to a Glooko Logobook app on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) devices.

With the app, diabetes patients can review a digital logbook of readings, review their daily blood sugar levels, annotate them and share the results with a doctor. The product debuted in November.

Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and managing partner of The Social+Capital Partnership, has joined Glooko’s board. Other investors include Bill Campbell, Vint Cerf, Judy Estrin, Andy Hertzfeld, Venky Harinarayan of Cambrian Ventures and Russell Hirsch of Prospect Venture Partners; and Xtreme Labs, a Canadian mobile applications development firm.

“Proactive and ongoing self-management of one’s health can now be a reality using mobile devices and well-designed software,” said Palihapitiya.  “Glooko has made important progress in helping individuals better manage one of the most pervasive diseases of our generation.”

Glooko is also releasing a new version of the Glooko Logbook app that supports Bayer’s Breeze 2 meter. It has a real-time food database, a 30-day logbook, and availability in Canada. The app is available on the iTunes App Store and the Glooko MeterSync cable can be purchased from Amazon.com.

Yogen Dalal, Glooko co-founder and chairman, said the company was able to deliver its solution in a year with just $1 million in seed capital. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Glook was founded in 2010 by Dalal, Sunny Madra and Anita Matthew. The company has 15 employees.

Competitors are makers of software and cables from the glucose meter vendors. But Glooko says it supports seven different meters, has a good user interface, and gets rid of the manual data entry of results by replacing that with an automatic logbook.

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