Blood glucose monitoring: necessary and sufficient?

In 1971, a salesman first brought an Eyetone, the earliest commercial blood glucose meter to the diabetes clinic at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx. As a third-year medical student I was fascinated by the technology, but, because it was difficult to use, it was classified as a physician device. Blood glucose meters today are small, virtually pain free, and reasonably accurate. The process of monitoring blood glucose can be expensive, but small increases in hemoglobin A1c can lead to increased complications, which are even more expensive.1 So who should monitor their plasma glucose and when?