Joel S. Douglas

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Joel S. Douglas is an American patent agent and business executive who helped create the first alternate-site glucose meter, a device used by millions of people with diabetes. He earned a civil engineering degree from the University of Connecticut in 1977 and a master’s in computer science from the University of New Haven in 1982.

At LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson glucose monitoring company, he was part of the team that won the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in 1995. LifeScan was later bought by Platinum Equity in 2018 for about $2.1 billion.

In 1996 he and Karen Drexler started Amira Medical Inc., a diabetes monitoring company with around 160 employees. Roche acquired Amira Medical in 2001.

In 2004, Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry (MD+DI) named Douglas one of the 100 most notable people in the medical device industry. He holds 103 patents. He is a member of the University of Connecticut Academy of Distinguished Engineers and serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Patent Practitioners. He founded Menlo Park Patents, a patent services company. In 2010, he and his wife Heidi established the Joel S. and Heidi S. Douglas Engineering Scholarship at the University of Connecticut.