A healthy young man who was in his early 30s was informed that his office would have free blood testing. He peeped inside the HR office where the blood test was being conducted and left out immediately ashen faced when he saw the large needle and syringe used by the nurse.

His reaction is typical of people who never had experienced going through a blood test since fear of needles is quite common. Future generations are considered luckier if Google pushes through with a patent it just received from the US Patent and Trademark Office on Dec 3.

The patent is for a Needle-Free Blood Draw device which Google applied for a patent in May 2014, reports TechTimes. Life Sciences, a Google company, has two other medical devices in the pipeline. One is smart contact lenses and the other cloud-connected sensors the size of a bandage that diabetics could use to monitor their glucose levels, reports The Verge.

Instead of using a needle, the device uses an abrupt surge of gas into a barrel with a micro-particle capable of penetrating the skin. According to the patent, the application could be used to draw a small amount of blood sample such as for a blood sugar test.

Diabetics are expected to benefit the most from this patent since they need to regularly test their blood for glucose level, inject insulin or have routine blood tests for their regular check-ups with specialists as what the office employee got used to when he became a diabetic in his late 30s.

In the US alone, there are 29 million diabetics, while globally, the World Health Organisation estimates diabetic patients make up 9 percent of adults in 2014

However, Google cautions patients not to infer from their patents because it is the patent-holder for several ideas, some of which could develop into real products while some would fizzle.

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