According to the Diabetes International Association 8.8% of the world’s population struggles with diabetes type 1, type 2 or gestational diabetes. It is a chronic condition, with no cure, in which there are high blood sugar levels over a prolonged period . The patient diagnosed with diabetes must always keep track of his blood sugar level taking periodic measurements frequently.
In order to make those measurements, patients end up carrying with them a whole measurement kit constantly, that includes test stripes, a glucose meter and a needle. Besides that, the glucose meters in the market are expensive equipments, which makes it a lot difficult for many people to own one of those gadgets and keep track of something that important for their health.
Besides being expensive, most of the regular glucose meters in the market only display the glucose level value on the screen, lacking on helping the user to interpret it, and keep track of his past measures. A lot of diabetes patients, aware of this need of keeping track of past measures, end up having to make charts on their own (using Microsoft Excel or similar tools), something that should be easily automated.
Our solution for all those problems is to develop a smartphone app that, along with a special case developed by us, can precisely measure the patients glucose meter using the phone’s camera. It can be developed for any smartphone with a camera and anyone who owns one could easily use our product. The idea is that the user still has to place his blood sample on the test stripe, bust instead placing it into the glucose meter, it would be placed inside our phone’s case and the app would do the reading of the stripe through the camera. As a result, no more glucose meters are needed.
The case also includes a compartment for keeping extra test stripes and it has a needle system attached to it. Therefore the user will no longer need to carry the measurement kit with him, the phone case will have everything required for measuring. And last but not least, our software helps the user interpreting the measures and organizes all the past measures as a list or a chart. The user can visualize those measures though our app and his/hers doctor can also see them though our web platform.
My role in this project was to study the target users, usability test, prototype creation, propose a product, Portotype and create the website.
If you want to know the origin (under the name of sango) and more details of this project, click here.