iPhone and Diabetes
Diabetes, Geek May 1st, 2010The iPhone is an amazing phone. Love it or hate it, you need to acknowledge that it was the first phone that was a game changer in the field of smart phones. Windows Mobile phones, while extremely functional and capable, didn’t have the ease of use to make it a viable choice over a simple feature phone to non tech-savvy people. The iPhone increased the speed of smartphone adoption and revitalized the mobile platform as a whole.
In spite of that, I was a late adopter of the iPhone, waiting until after the iPhone 3G but before the 3.0 OS was out for my purchase. With the promise of copy and paste as well as push notifications being thrown around with the upcoming update, I made the plunge in February of 2009, slightly before the iPhone 3.0 OS was announced. On March 17th, 2009, the official announcement was made. This did include the aforementioned copy and paste and push notifications as well as landscape mode and MMS as well as some rich new APIs for developers to use.
At that announcement, Apple invited Lifescan to demonstrate an application that integrated the iPhone with a glucometer. A glucometer (glucose meter) is a device that, with a small sample of blood, can determine the amount of glucose in your blood stream. These meters are the speedometer of the diabetic, allowing the user to make informed decisions about their dietary intake, insulin usage as well as keep track of overall sugar control. There is no cure for diabetes; diabetics must manage their blood sugar levels on their own, and the only reliable way to gauge glucose levels is to measure them with a glucometer.
As a diabetic and a technology fan, I was overjoyed. Managing diabetes is a time consuming task. I welcome and encourage any tool that can be utilized to ease keeping track of glucose levels. Yet, here we are, over a year later, and the entire system promised in the 3.0 OS announcement is vaporware. Sure. there is other software that I’ve tried, both for the iPhone (such as Glucose Buddy and bant), and even some meters, with serial cables, can connect to proprietary software and transfer your data to your computer for further analysis. These work, but they are all designed to work best within their own framework. Though Glucose Buddy is able to export your data in a CSV format to you via email, it’s certainly not ideal for running an automated system.
What I’m looking for is a simple way to log my blood sugars into a database where I can then process the data however I want. Perhaps I am an edge case, since, as a web developer, I know how to harness and process data. However, I am astonished that none of the diabetes applications have taken that step to allow full data usage. It’s my health data! I want to use it in a way that’s meaningful to me, not in the way that your application prescribes. Most of the applications that I’ve seen are bloated; they include carb counting, interfacing with twitter, a forum, or some other social network. I don’t want that. I need a place to enter a glucose reading, the time, a time slot (such as breakfast, lunch, dinner) and a free text area for notes. That’s it! The application should take minimal time to load and allow me to enter the data fast and move on with my life. When I’m ready, I should be able to upload the data to a server where I can then organize, graph, annotate and review my data further.
I have thought of writing my own application to do all of this processing. However, I have concerns about storing personally identifiable medical information in accordance with HIPAA regulations. I would like to research how these regulations would apply to an application for simple blood glucose management. In this litigious society, I’d rather not take a chance to be sued. If anybody has some good links that covers these issues, it would be appreciated if you could leave them in the comments.
Apple and Lifescan have demonstrated the future of blood glucose management. The technology exists to make this all happen. They have dangled it in front of me, showing how easy they could make diabetes management. Others have tried to fill the gap, but fall short with bloated applications that do little to enable data portability. I want simple. I want easy. I want to control my diabetes, rather than having my diabetes (and the technology that I use to monitor it) control me.
May 1st, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Have you looked at http://www.dexcom.com Being in the medical device industry I almost took a job with them. It is a pretty slick system.
May 2nd, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about CGM devices. They’re fairly new, coming on to the scene within the last few years. The problem is that many insurance companies are denying them as not medically necessary. It’s all a bunch of horseshit, obviously, but the insurance companies just try to do everything to hang on to their money.
It would be great to have a CGM device. I think (and hope) that it will be a standard issue device for every diabetic in the not-so-distant future.
May 14th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Have you checked out dLife yet? It really is an amazing app with an extraordinary amount of information, videos and a glucose tracker.
May 14th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
What is needed with any of these applications is a desire by the developers to take feedback and improve the application even if the feedback suggests considerable change. Normal software goes through numerous release cycles before being considered good, but the App store model seems, in my opinion, to promote a more disposable approach to software where developers can’t make much off of any one application so they write them cheaply and move on.
May 14th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
@Chris – No, I haven’t bought dLife, however I have looked at it in the iTunes store. It does look nice, but at the same time, I really only want a glucose tracking module. I don’t want recipes, videos on living with diabetes and a Q&A section. They are great resources to have, and they all have their places. I personally don’t want to consume that information when all I want to do is simply enter one number and move on.
@Wellescent – Perhaps. I haven’t directly contacted any developer, small or large, to see if they would be open to suggestions. But that’s just me since I know I can develop my own application for my own use that I can design however I want it.
July 20th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
HIPAA + blood sugar / glucose tracking, let us know if you find out more =)
~Leslie
April 2nd, 2011 at 7:16 am
Hi Evan, I am totally frustrated, as you are with the lack of integration of kit. There are iphone components being publicised without any release date, which seems common from the industry – I have had my hopes raised countless times by the “cure diabetes” stories in the past, hard to take when I was younger.
I live in the UK, and have just bought an ipod touch 4th gen, explicitly for tracking etc, but imagine my annoyance when Apple refused to let me pay for the FREE wavesense app, because it is only allowed for US customers. I complained, but got nowhere.
You are not an edge case, I am an engineer, and am very used to dealing with data in my life, and really want something with good analysis tools for reviewing data.
Like you, I have concluded that you need to write your own tools.
If you ever come up with something, I am interested and would pay if someone creates an app with integrated, or “cloud” data analysis.
Thanks John.