The present invention encompasses a model-based method for determining insulin sensitivity and glucose absorption from oral glucose tolerance tests or mixed meals. The present invention has several advantages over current methods. The technique requires about four to six blood samples taken over about two to three hours following glucose ingestion and is therefore applicable to large-scale clinical trials. The analysis involves a reduced version of the classical minimal model, a method for describing glucose absorption using only two parameters, and an integral approach enabling the parameters to be obtained using simple algebra. The present method robustly identifies differences in insulin sensitivity in different patient types as well as improvements in insulin sensitivity arising from pharmaceutic therapy. In addition, insulin sensitivity measurements obtained with the present method are highly correlated with results from hyperinsulinemic clamps (r.sup.2>0.8). This method is therefore a practical and robust method for determining insulin sensitivity under physiologic conditions.