Digital Technologies for Diabetic Management Essay

Over the past two decades, technology has taken over lives, not only in our professional life, but also in our personal life, especially in our health. Medical applications in smartphones are a convenient tool to keep patients engaged in their ongoing treatment plans. Digital technology plays a crucial role in the self- management in diabetic patients. Managing diabetes needs a great deal of time in which checking blood glucose level, calculating the insulin, and calculating the carbohydrate intake. But this can be managed in fingertips nowadays. There are numerous smartphone applications are available for diabetic patients to keep their diabetic check.
According to the statistics of the American Diabetic Association, "from 2011 an estimate of 25.8 million children and adults in the United States have type 1 or type 2 diabetes" (Ristau, R. A., Yang, J., & White, J. R, 2013). So managing diabetes in children and adults play a crucial play in this society now. The key factors of diabetes management are following a healthy lifestyle, proper blood glucose level checking, medication compliance, and dietary intake and exercise activities. Living in a high tech environment, smartphone can be the best communication or education tool for patients to manage diabetes. "The American Diabetes Association recommends that patients whose medication regimen includes multiple daily insulin injections or who use insulin pump test and record their blood glucose 3 times daily. Recording blood glucose values using an app that logs results may alleviate some of the burden of carrying a hard copy recording system" (Ristau, R. A et al., 2013).
Patient Profile for Diabetic Management
The patient selected to use the diabetic management application is a forty two year old Caucasian male with newly diagnosed diabetes type II. The application used for this patient is Diabetes Buddy. The patient is familiar with using smartphones and all its applications. The patient is currently using a weight watcher application, which even help with patient's diabetic management. The patient does have a history of morbid obesity and family history of diabetes. Diabetes Buddy is an application which is available on all smartphones, in which it records and monitor blood glucose level, carbohydrate intake, time taken for exercise and will show the amount of insulin needed for that patient. Diabetic buddy also allows patients to add a personalized recipe. Due to newly diagnosed diabetes, patient may forget to check the blood glucose level and to take medicine. So this application is good for him with reminders and alert messages to check glucose level and to take medications.
Large number of people living with diabetes are turning towards smartphone. According to the American Diabetes Association, scientific evidences have proven that people using smartphone diabetic application a following healthy diet, exercise and new lifestyle has shown an improvement in their Hemoglobin A1C level compared to people who did not use the application. Self-monitoring blood glucose shown to be a useful tool in improving patient glycemic control. Smartphone application diabetes buddy truly supports self-management.