Review – LifeScan OneTouch Verio Pro

A Verio Pro, yesterday

How come I’m testing and reviewing?

After spotting an advert in Balance, I called Lifescan to blag a new OneTouch Verio Pro to test out. From the advert it seemed like a very, very slimmed down version of the Aviva Expert and it claimed to be able to spot patterns of high and low readings and to make suggests if dosages needed altering.

There was also mention of its “GlucoFilter” which “corrects for the presence of certain substances that, when present at therapeutic levels, commonly interfere with accurate BG results, such as paracetamol and Vitamin C.” That’s all new on me but I thought I’d give it a go…

In the box

The meter arrives in the usual shiny box and inside is the meter itself, a pack of ten test strips, the OneTouch Comfort finger-pricker with stabby things, black carry case roughly 17cm by 10cm, control solution, plenty of leaflets and a manual the size of a small novel.

The meter

Sized 57mm x 88m (roughly twice the size of the Accu-Chek Aviva Nano) with three buttons on the front and a slot at the top for the test strip. The display is very clear and similar in shade to a generic e-book reader with the added benefit of being backlit for the dark. Although I always have issues when testing in the dark with actually getting the blood that’s slowly coming out of my finger onto the strip.

One huge plus is that it takes 2 AAA batteries to power it.  The big issue with my current, favoured, Aviva Nano is the use of flat CR2032 batteries that aren’t cheap to replace. Be aware though it’s not possible to use rechargeable batteries in the meter, according to the hefty manual.

The stabber

I cannot emphasise enough how impressed I was with the blood extractor. It is easily the least painful pricker I’ve used, although the needles aren’t as hard-wearing as my previous Multiclix so will not be suitable for those that replace their lancets less frequently.

In use

The test strips need blood applying from the side, which is different for me but it just might be I’ve not come across that style of strip before [Abbott’s FreeStyle Lite also has sideways strips – Tim]. The strips need 0.4 µl of blood, which isn’t too bad and results are returned in 5 seconds after a countdown on the display.

The brains

The data analysis is where I had really high hopes for the Verio Pro and I was maybe a little over-optimistic in what I believed it could offer me. It comes with average analysis scores over 7, 14 and 30 days. Results can be tagged as before-meal, after-meal, fasting or bedtime.

The highly promising trend analysis looks at your BG and will display a message depending on whether it spots patterns in your BG. The lower limit of the acceptable range is set at 3.8mmol/L but the upper pre-meal limit is changeable depending on your own targets.

A low pattern message will appear when you get a ‘low’ (under 3.8) BG on any 2 days within the same 3 hour period over the last 5 consecutive days.

A high pattern message will appear when you get a ‘high’ BG on any 3 days with the test tagged as pre-meal within the same 3hr period over the last 5 consecutive days. This only works for pre-meal tagged tests.

That’s it. No more analysis given, which is a great shame. There’s obviously potential here but the inability to add insulin or notes for exercise, etc., means that the 1,001 other ;