Using an App to Track Blood Sugar Levels from Your Glucose Meter
This content material initially appeared on diaTribe. Republished with permission.
By Corinna Cornejo
Gone are the times whenever you had to write down your entire particular person blood sugar readings in a paper logbook in your healthcare supplier to overview. 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 document of your blood sugar readings. The proper blood sugar monitoring app may even lighten the load of managing diabetes by robotically capturing your readings as you’re taking each.
With an app, all of your readings are saved electronically in a single place, making it straightforward to see and overview your blood sugar readings for the day, week, month, even quarter.
Some of at the moment’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 exhibiting your readings over totally different intervals of time
- Plot these graphs towards your goal blood sugar vary targets
Apps make these calculations and graphs in shareable codecs, like PDFs or spreadsheets, that you would be able to ship to your healthcare supplier or others in your help system. Some apps even provide the possibility of sending information robotically 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 may possibly just about remove any want to manually document any of your blood sugar readings.
We’re even beginning to see monitoring apps that collect information from multiple machine. If you additionally use a health tracker or a wise insulin pen you would possibly find a way to use a single app to seize information from all of them in a single place.
9 Things to Look For in a Blood Sugar Monitoring App
There are quite a lot of blood sugar monitoring apps out there. Just search “sugar tracking” within the App Store or Google Play. How do you select amongst them? Beyond wanting on the star scores, listed here are another particulars that make a distinction in its ease of use and worth.
The app connects immediately together with your glucose meter or CGM. An app that connects immediately to your meter shall be in a position to robotically document your readings by means of 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 you’ll find the app you need within the App Store or Google Play upfront. If the app doesn’t work together with your cellphone it’s not going to be seamless to use.
The app collects extra than simply blood sugar readings. Depending on the app, it’s possible you’ll find a way to additionally document your meals, train, and medicine. How a lot of this data the app can accumulate will differ.
At its easiest, the app will embrace tags you need to 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 basic 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’ll have to enter any of this extra data your self utilizing the app in your cellphone.
The app is appropriate with wearables and different units. Some apps do join immediately with a wearable health tracker, like Fitbit. And some apps embrace connections with different digital well being units, just like the InPen sensible insulin pen. If you’ll find a single app that collects information from all of the units you employ, that may make a lot of your monitoring computerized and prevent the effort and time required to enter every factor into your app. It may 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 find a way 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 four.four to 10.zero mmol/L). You will need to find a way to set your individual goal vary and alter it, when vital, to keep in sync together with your personalised well being targets.
Also, you will have to find a way 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 employ the app provides to total psychological fatigue.
The app presents blood sugar readings and statistics in a method that’s straightforward to learn on the display. Different apps current readings and statistics in several methods. Some apps simply present an inventory of numbers. That record might or might not embrace some type of color-coding that signifies if the studying was in or out of vary. Other apps present your readings and statistics in some type 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 will have an app that may seize extra than simply blood sugar readings it ought to present some type of report that exhibits all that information. The report also needs to embrace some type of timeline so you’ll be able to 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 had been taken and the way a lot was taken.
The app makes it straightforward to share and obtain your readings and experiences. Whether it’s by means of a cloud-based archive or a file that may be emailed it must be straightforward to share together with your healthcare supplier or anybody else you want. You will even need to have the choice to obtain all of your information.
The price have to be affordable. You might find a way 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 saved up to date. It might be very irritating when swiftly your app now not works as a result of it’s now not appropriate together with your cellphone’s working system.
Some apps cost a subscription payment. Generally, these come out to lower than $50/yr. But it’s yet one more price in your diabetes care.
The price of many apps lately 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 isn’t a further expense.
Find the App That Best Serves Your Needs
Blood sugar monitoring apps at the moment might 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 knowledge associated to how you might be managing your diabetes. Chances are the app that most closely fits your wants is someplace in between.
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