Google has announced that its life sciences team will be joining hands with DexCom to build a new low-cost bandage-sized sensor for people with diabetes.

DexCom is a company that specializes in glucose monitoring devices. Together with The Cloud, they are able to create a wearable sensor that is disposable, of use to people with all types of diabetes and affordable with real-time information, according to The Market Business.

The relationship was ignited in order to successfully develop next-generation nonstop glucose monitoring that will be “substantially smaller and much less expensive than existing technologies.”

The head of the life sciences team at Google, Andrew Conrad, said: “This collaboration is another step toward expanding monitoring options and making it easier for people with diabetes to proactively manage their health.”

The collaboration, and device, comes at a time that the serious disease needs help in monitoring and managing patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there are more than 29 million Americans with diabetes and currently 1 in 4 of them are not even aware that they are affected by the disorder.

But diabetes can be managed with the right amount of physical activity, diet and medication. But the first step to successfully managing any disease, is awareness, and that is where the new device comes in. By keeping accurate track of personal glucose levels, a patient is then able to address their situation more confidently.

The newly built team aim to make their new device the standard in care for patients with diabetes with even higher hopes to completely eliminate the fingerstick glucometer altogether.

DexCom’s executive vice president of strategy and product development, Steve Pacelli, thinks that the new device will be a commercial success.

“You get it to the point where you overcome basically all of the objections that a patient would have to wearing the device – it talks to your phone, it doesn’t have to be calibrated, you don’t take fingersticks anymore – there really isn’t a reason that you couldn’t get very significant penetration into the Type 1 market in the US.”

DexCom and Google are aiming at having the device available commercially within the next two to three years.