Case Study: Roche Diagnostics achieves more accurate, robust glucose monitoring through integrated sensor design with COMSOL Multiphysics

Roche Diagnostics - Customer Case Study

Roche Diagnostics, a global leader in diabetes care, faced the challenge of making glucose test strips robust to environmental conditions, chemical interferences, and sample variability so they deliver consistently accurate readings. To better understand coupled chemical, electrical and transport phenomena in their amperometric sensors, Roche used Comsol Multiphysics software from vendor Comsol to simulate reagent electrochemistry, electrode behavior, and measurement responses alongside experiments.

Using Comsol, Roche built a 1D reaction–transport model (combining Michaelis–Menten enzyme kinetics and mixed Butler–Volmer electrode kinetics) and a 3D electrical/impedance model to isolate effects of temperature and hematocrit and to optimize electrode geometry and materials. The simulations enabled DC-measurement compensation via AC impedance, maximized sensitivity to hematocrit while reducing sensitivity to manufacturing tolerances, and guided design changes that improved measurement accuracy and moved the new sensor configuration toward production.

Roche Diagnostics

Harvey Buck

Principal Scientist