Diabetics have a reason to cheer, for physically maintaining a log of food intake and blood sugar levels is set to be a thing of the past. A hand-held device to track the rise and fall in sugar levels of patients, is round the corner.
Diabetics have a reason to cheer, for physically maintaining a log of food intake and blood sugar levels is set to be a thing of the past. A hand-held device to track the rise and fall in sugar levels of patients, is round the corner.
Globally, 38.2 crore persons suffer from diabetes. 17% of all diabetics live in India, estimated at 6.7 crore.
Often, diabetics are unable to control their urges of craving potentially risky food, and cheat on their prescribed diets. Add to that, the task of maintaining a manual diary of their food intake and blood sugar readings, and you have a rather disgruntled, complacent lot.
Pharmacist Shreekant Pawar, along with his 7-member team, has invented 'Diabeto', a hand-held bird-shaped bluetooth device, to better monitor diabetes. The device fits into a glucometer (used by diabetics to track their blood sugar levels) with the help of a port and a 2.5 mm jack.
Three years ago, Pawar embarked upon making a remote hardware for monitoring diabetes after his own 76-year-old diabetic father was careless about tracking his sugar levels. Explaining the working of his invention, 32-year-old Pawar said: “While a glucometer reflects only the last blood sugar reading, Diabeto stores all the previously accumulated readings and can transmit them via bluetooth onto the user's cellphone, through a mobile application.”
The mobile app, also titled Diabeto, will be available for iOS and Android smartphones. While recording the levels, the user is asked to feed in their mood. The app tracks a patient's mood with help of emojis that portray if s/he is unwell, sad, stressed out, or happy. Also, s/he needs to punch in the unit of insulin consumed, exercise routine and a photograph of the food eaten while recording the levels.
This, Pawar explained, enables patients to collect long-term data. “At times, the patient may have eaten the same amount of food but the sugars may spiral out of control. This means that presence or absence of other parameters like stress levels, insulin and exercise have to be considered to get a holistic picture,” added Pawar.
Patients won't be the only ones benefiting from Diabeto. “Instead of going through physical records of their patients' notebook, doctors can now monitor the health records through a login and password. If their sugar levels raise a red flag, the doctor can call the patient to the clinic straightaway,” Pawar said.
Pawar has started a crowd-funding initiative online which will kick off from January 20 to support his venture. “We don't have the wherewithal to manufacture the device currently. We are looking at raising $10,000 over a period of 45 days by asking people to pre-order the device. We will manufacture the devices according to the demand,” Pawar told dna.
At present, 400 persons across the world have expressed interest in ordering the device which costs Rs3,000 – 3,600). “Many children of diabetic parents are keen on buying the device so that they can better take care of their parents' health,” Pawar informed.
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