Enzyme strips for blood sugar testing

Tom recommended adopting 2D printheads for enzyme deposition; the company refused. Used to make the point that 2D printing applications outside the obvious ones were emerging in parallel with 3D.

There's a related story from the same era. They were trying to make little enzyme strips for testing blood sugar — those plastic strips diabetics use, where you prick your finger, put a drop of blood on the strip, and read it on a little meter. The enzyme on that strip costs ten thousand dollars a gallon. They were having terrible quality-control problems getting the enzyme onto the strips. I said, why don't you get a 2D printhead and just print the enzyme onto these strips, however much you want? Well, it turns out one of the second big applications for 3D printing wasn't enzyme strips — that company refused to listen, though I'll bet you now they're using the technology — it was making pharmaceutical pills. Most of the filling in a pill is calcium carbonate, limestone, something not toxic — sometimes magnesium carbonate. That's the carrier for the real drug.