Most of the phone apps for diabetes lack education and support functions

(HealthDay) – Most applications for diabetes miss the opportunity to improve care and health by not providing real – time decision support or d & # 39; situation-specific education on self-management of blood glucose, according to a research letter published in the April 16 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association.

Elaine Lum, Ph.D., of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and her colleagues consulted the 42Matters application database using the terms diabetes, blood glucose, and blood glucose on December 7, 2018. Apps (free, " freemium "and for pay) updated at least once in the last 17 months (proxy for application maintenance and user support) have been filtered, downloaded and evaluated against evidence-based criteria and derived from diabetes management guidelines.

The researchers found that 371 potential applications (519 out of 198) met the inclusion criteria and were downloaded. All applications have recorded blood glucose levels. Reminders for measuring blood glucose were present in 27.8% of applications and the recording of hemoglobin A1c was present in 28.6%. Users were alerted to hypoglycemia in 58.8% of applications and hyperglycemia to 58.4% via an explicit message, an prompt or a color change. A message explicitly warning users of hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia was displayed in 37.0% and 32.4% of apps, respectively, and was accompanied by a prompt of action in 20.7% of cases of hypoglycemia and 15.3% of cases of hyperglycemia. The same alert was triggered for consecutive out-of-range values ​​during a 24-hour period in 86.6 and 88.9% of applications for hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia, respectively.

"Quality badurance mechanisms, such as certification of applications, are needed to reach their potential for diabetes care support," write the authors.

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