Empowerment of diabetic patients through mHealth technologies and education: development of a pilot self-management application

Diabetes is a major, global and increasing condition that occurs when the insulin-glucagon regulatory mechanism is affected, leading to uncontrolled hyper- and hypoglycaemia events that may be life-threatening. However, it has been shown that through daily monitoring, appropriate patient-specific empowerment, lifestyle behavior of diabetics can be positively influenced and the associated and costly diabetes complications significantly reduced. As personal face-to-face coaching is costly and hard to scale, mobile applications and services have now become a key driver of mobile Health (mHealth) deployment, especially as a helpful way for self-management. Despite the huge mHealth market, a major limitation of many diabetes apps is that they do not use inputted data to help patients determine their daily insulin doses. On the other hand, the majority of existing insulin dose calculator apps provide no protection against - or even may actively contribute to - incorrect or inappropriate dose recommendations that put users at risk. Besides, there is clear evidence that lack of education on insulinotherapy and carbohydrate counting is associated with higher blood glucose variability with type 1 diabetes. Hence, there is a need for an accurate modelling of glucose-insulin dynamics together as well as providing adequate educational support. The aims of this paper are: a) to highlight the usefulness of mHealth technologies in chronic disease management; b) to describe and discuss the development of an insulin bolus calculator integrated into a pilot mHealth app; c) to underline the importance of diabetes self-management education.