This content material initially appeared on diaTribe. Republished with permission.
By Corinna Cornejo
Gone are the times once you had to write down your whole particular person blood sugar readings in a paper logbook in your healthcare supplier to assessment. As the saying goes, “There’s an app for that!”
Let’s check out the advantages of utilizing an app in your smartphone to observe the outcomes from your blood glucose meter.
What a Blood Sugar Tracking App Can Do for You
Using an app to observe your blood sugar readings can create a extra full and correct report of your blood sugar readings. The proper blood sugar monitoring app may even lighten the load of managing diabetes by mechanically capturing your readings as you are taking each.
With an app, all of your readings are saved electronically in a single place, making it simple to see and assessment your blood sugar readings for the day, week, month, even quarter.
Some of in the present day’s hottest diabetes apps embrace mySugr, Glucose Buddy, and OneDrop.
Most apps will do some evaluation of your blood sugar readings, together with a few of the following:
- Calculate each day, weekly, and month-to-month averages and deviations in your readings
- Track the variety of hyperglycemic and hypoglycemic episodes you’ve skilled over time
- Produce graphs displaying your readings over totally different durations of time
- Plot these graphs in opposition to your goal blood sugar vary targets
Apps make these calculations and graphs in shareable codecs, like PDFs or spreadsheets, which you can ship to your healthcare supplier or others in your help system. Some apps even provide the possibility of sending knowledge mechanically to your supplier, making it that a lot simpler for them to help you.
And in case your app is built-in together with your glucose meter or CGM (steady glucose monitor) it will possibly just about remove any want to manually report any of your blood sugar readings.
We’re even beginning to see monitoring apps that collect knowledge from a couple of machine. If you additionally use a health tracker or a wise insulin pen you would possibly have the ability to use a single app to seize knowledge from all of them in a single place.
9 Things to Look For in a Blood Sugar Monitoring App
There are numerous blood sugar monitoring apps accessible. Just search “sugar tracking” within the App Store or Google Play. How do you select amongst them? Beyond wanting on the star rankings, listed here are another particulars that make a distinction in its ease of use and worth.
The app connects straight together with your glucose meter or CGM. An app that connects straight to your meter can be in a position to mechanically report your readings by Bluetooth or one other wi-fi connection. This eliminates the necessity for you to manually enter every blood sugar studying, its date, and time. Depending on the app you may not even have to open the app in your studying to get captured.
The app is appropriate together with your smartphone. Believe it or not, not each app has each an iOS and Android model. Make certain yow will discover the app you need within the App Store or Google Play upfront. If the app doesn’t work together with your telephone it’s not going to be seamless to use.
The app collects extra than simply blood sugar readings. Depending on the app, you might have the ability to additionally report your meals, train, and medicine. How a lot of this data the app can gather will fluctuate.
At its easiest, the app will embrace tags you should use to point out issues like if the blood sugar studying was taken earlier than or after a meal. Many apps embrace fields for including a common observe. Some apps have fields for getting into particular data, just like the variety of insulin models taken or minutes of train. For essentially the most half, you should have to enter any of this extra data your self utilizing the app in your telephone.
The app is appropriate with wearables and different gadgets. Some apps do join straight with a wearable health tracker, like Fitbit. And some apps embrace connections with different digital well being gadgets, just like the InPen good insulin pen. If yow will discover a single app that collects knowledge from all of the gadgets you utilize, that may make a lot of your monitoring automated and prevent the effort and time required to enter every factor into your app. It may also prevent from having to take a look at a number of totally different apps to get a extra full image of the way you’re managing your diabetes.
The app is configurable. You need to have the ability to arrange the app to match your wants and preferences. For instance, not everyone seems to be aiming for the usual goal vary of 80 to 180 mg/dL (or 4.4 to 10.0 mmol/L). You will need to have the ability to set your personal goal vary and alter it, when mandatory, to keep in sync together with your personalised well being targets.
Also, you will have to have the ability to configure how the app shows the date and whether or not it makes use of a 12-hour or a 24-hour clock. These seem to be small particulars. But having to mentally convert the date or time each time you utilize the app provides to total psychological fatigue.
The app presents blood sugar readings and statistics in a method that’s simple to learn on the display screen. Different apps current readings and statistics in several methods. Some apps simply present an inventory of numbers. That listing might or might not embrace some sort of color-coding that signifies if the studying was in or out of vary. Other apps present your readings and statistics in some sort of graph, which may give you a way of how typically your blood sugar readings have been excessive, low, and in vary.
The app produces a complete report of all the info collected. If you’ve got an app that may seize extra than simply blood sugar readings it ought to present some sort of report that reveals all that knowledge. The report also needs to embrace some sort of timeline so you may see your blood sugar readings in relation to different occasions. The report ought to present if the studying was earlier than or after a meal or train. It also needs to present when insulin or different drugs have been taken and the way a lot was taken.
The app makes it simple to share and obtain your readings and reviews. Whether it’s by a cloud-based archive or a file that may be emailed it needs to be simple to share together with your healthcare supplier or anybody else you want. You may also need to have the choice to obtain all of your knowledge.
The value have to be affordable. You might have the ability to discover a free app that meets your wants, however free apps have a tendency to have restricted options and capabilities. Often with free apps, for the reason that developer isn’t getting paid, they aren’t stored up to date. It may be very irritating when impulsively your app now not works as a result of it’s now not appropriate together with your telephone’s working system.
Some apps cost a subscription price. Generally, these come out to lower than $50/yr. But it’s yet another value in your diabetes care.
The value of many apps nowadays is folded into the price of getting a meter or check strips. As you pay in your testing provides the price of utilizing the app is roofed, so there is no such thing as a extra expense.
Find the App That Best Serves Your Needs
Blood sugar monitoring apps in the present day may be easy, stripped-down instruments that do little greater than seize your readings and save them to the cloud. Or they will seize complete units of information associated to how you’re managing your diabetes. Chances are the app that most closely fits your wants is someplace in between.
