Frontiers in Endocrinology conducted a study with 1052 type 1 and 630 type 2 diabetes patients. Half of those with type 1 diabetes, and a third of those with type 2, used some sort of diabetes app. The study concluded that those who used apps had better blood glucose levels than those who did not.
Digitisation in the field of diabetes
Nowadays we can choose from a wide variety of apps that can either be connected to certain diabetes-related healthcare devices, which are usually developed by the manufacturers, or to separate “independent” applications. It may be worth categorising them by level of digitisation, as different app users have different needs and are comfortable with different levels of digitisation.
Diabetics should choose apps that are designed for their level of digital literacy, for instance first time users might be put off by an application that is difficult to use. For some it may be important to use an app that can log and show different activities from different devices at the same time, in a complex way, in order to manage their diabetes. For others, more data and complex analyses may be what they consider most important when choosing a diabetes logging app.
Simpler diabetes apps
Many apps are available for free and can be found among the easy-to-use ones. DiabTrend is one of these apps, which can be downloaded on Android and iOS. Almost all of the functions are available in the free version. Some of these useful functions include the hypo and hyper warnings and medical and parental supervision, among others.
A similar app is Blood Sugar Diary for Diabetes, which can also synchronise your data with a variety of blood glucose monitoring devices, log your values and display them through interesting statistics.
Some blood glucose monitoring companies have their own apps, for instance ACCU-CHEK® Connect App, which allows you to connect to the company’s own devices and thus blood glucose measurements will be digitally logged.
Some drug delivery system manufacturers also have their own apps, such as MiniMed™ Mobile US from MedTronic.
Demands of the tech-savvy and infinite data
For those who want to see more complex analyses, or want to export their blood glucose monitoring data, the free app Hedia is a good choice, as well as Gluco Me. With the latter app, data can be processed through several data visualisation solutions and can even be coordinated and compared with other data.
Clear, transparent data
DiabTrend is also available as a free app and offers many additional features, such as:
- DiaPanda-management 🐼
- Food recognition 🍔
- Speech recognition 🗣
- Integration with different sensors, software, activity tracker 🔗
- Education 🎓
- Reminders 📌
- Hypo and hyper warnings❗
- Extended parental supervision 👥
- HbA1c estimation 📉
- Telemedicine 🌐
Voice-based data entry and photo-based food recognition simplify daily routines by allowing us to spend less time on diabetes management, thus making logging easier.
The DiabTrend diabetes logging app has a paid function (‘prediction’) which can help type 1 and 2 diabetics know what their blood glucose levels will be in the next two hours.
Such predictions can be especially useful if you are a parent of a diabetic child, as it allows parents to check, at any time, what their child’s blood glucose levels will be in the next two hours.
Source: www.ncbi.com
