A major reason why domestic blood glucose meter brands sell their test strips at only about half the price of imported brands is their significantly lower sales volume. Furthermore, the fact that almost all medical institutions use imported brands indicates a substantial gap between domestic and imported products.
While achieving excellent stability and accuracy in one or two batches of test strips is not difficult, ensuring consistent stability and accuracy across every batch is challenging. Even major international manufacturers struggle to guarantee perfect accuracy every time. For example, Johnson & Johnson recalled multiple batches of test strips globally in 2005 due to coding errors. This difference in technology lies in the fact that major international manufacturers can generally control stability to within 5% and accuracy to over 95%, while smaller manufacturers and domestic products often fall short of these levels.
In short, the core technology of rapid blood glucose monitoring systems is quite complex. The differences in technology between manufacturers can only be attributed to who has a better grasp of the technology. No manufacturer has absolute control over all the core technologies. Everyone is constantly exploring. The Johnson & Johnson calibration incident in 2005 and the Roche FDA incident in the United States in 2007 both illustrate that even the top international companies do not have absolute control over rapid blood glucose testing technology. If this is the case for these large manufacturers, then the situation for smaller manufacturers can be imagined.
