By Tim Seyfert

Innovative ideas are often conceived at unexpected times. In the case of Los Altos resident Michael Allen, it was while on vacation that he visualized the concept for his own breakthrough brainchild.

Six years ago, Allen was flying back from the East Coast when he saw a magazine ad for a pocket calculator. Allen had worked in the medical device industry for nearly 20 years, and the ad got his mind-wheels cranking over how to make medical equipment more compact and convenient, specifically medical instruments for diabetes.

He came up with the idea for a handheld, disposable diabetes-testing device that could quickly calculate the body’s glycated hemoglobin — something normally done only in doctors’ offices. After initial research, Allen, who has a degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, set up shop in his garage and enlisted the help of experts in micro-optics and electronics to help develop the product.

“I realized there was a demand in the market for something like this,” Allen said. “There was no device out there that tracked the disease, which is what really counts with diabetes. Diabetics were having to go to the doctor’s office and wait up to a week for lab results.”

Since 1994, Allen has manufactured and marketed the testing device, sold under the name A1CNow, through his Sunnyvale-based company, Metrika Inc. Allen serves as chairman and CEO of the company, which employs around 80 people.

As of January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the company to sell the diabetes monitor over the counter. The device had been available since last summer, but for use only in medical offices and laboratories. Since the FDA approval, the A1CNow test has been available in drugstores such as Walgreens for around $25.

“Our goal is to have the test accessable for both home use and in medical offices,” Allen said. “We want to make it convenient for people living with diabetes.”

The portable device is the first of its type, measuring the body’s average blood-sugar level over a three-month period in just eight minutes. According to Taking Control of Your Diabetes (TCYD), a non-profit organization promoting diabetes education, a three-month average can indicate a patient’s level of risk for diabetes-related problems, such as heart and kidney diseases. If the level turns out to be too high, the patient’s doctor can take action to bring the level down.

In the United States, cases of diabetes increase about 10 percent a year. There are an estimated 17 million Americans and 150 million people worldwide suffering from the disease. Besides heredity, the main causes of diabetes are poor diet and obesity. Up to one-third of people in the early stages of diabetes don’t even know they have the disease, according TCYD.

“The motivation behind (the A1CNow test) has always been the same: giving diabetics a test that allows them to easily keep track of their condition,” Allen said. “That way they could get the proper treatment and live their lives to the fullest.”

For more information, logon to www.metrika.com.