A diet-guide mobile application for diabetes mellitus management

Abstract

Modern nutritional habits have caused the dramatic increase in diabetes mellitus cases, predominantly in developed countries. Diabetes, which is characterized by high blood sugar levels over a prolonged period, is mainly a metabolic disease and is of three types: Type 1 results from pancreas' failure to produce enough insulin. Type 2 begins with cells' resistance to insulin and may lead to a lack of insulin. Finally, gestational diabetes occurs in women during pregnancy. This paper presents "Diabetes Manager", a mobile application for Android devices that manages Type 1 diabetes. More specifically, it logs everyday blood glucose levels at specific times, it monitors the patient's meals, it calculates the insulin units a patient should take based on the premeal blood glucose measurement, the meal's carbohydrates and the physical exercise (s)he may take, it notifies the user for future blood glucose measurements and it saves and sends the patient's logs files to her/his doctor. The application uses the Hellenic Diabetes Association's food database - a food database used mainly by the Greek diabetics, and for that reason it is addressed to that group of patients. The paper presents the application's functionalities, discusses its value added relative to pertinent applications and concludes with thoughts and ideas for future improvement.