Mobile Technology to Empower People with Diabetes Mellitus: Design and Development of a Mobile Application

Recent advances in information and communication technologies permitted the design and development of new patient-centric models for the provision of better health care services and enhancement of patient's self-management. This paper presents a prototype mobile phone application which is being designed to improve the self-management of individuals with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM). The developed application using the Microsoft .Net framework runs on 3G mobile phones. The application consists of five major interfaces for the management of: blood glucose measurements, blood pressure measurements, insulin dosage, food/drink intake and physical activity. Furthermore, the user has the following capabilities i) to keep notes, and ii) in case of an emergency to press a button, in order to transmit immediately his/her position to both an emergency call center, and the attendant physician. It has to be noted, that the above mentioned data are stored locally to the mobile phone, and regularly transmitted via the mobile network to a dedicated hospital web-server. Technical evaluation of the prototype indicates that the use of the mobile network makes feasible the self-management of T1DM.