Diabetes diaries

Last night I participated to the GB DOC tweetchat for the first time. GB DOC (@theGBDOC) is the Diabetes Online Community in Great Britain, and tweetchat is real time conversation on the internet, using Twitter. Similar online communities exist at least in Australia (@OzDiabetesOC), Canada (@theCANDOC), France (@Fr_DOC), Germany (deDOC), Italy (@ITDoc3), Nigeria (@theNGdoc), Spain (@es_doc), and the United States (@DiabetesSocMed). But not in Finland, at least yet.

I've been monitoring the GB DOC chat a few times. This time the topic was particularly interesting for me, so I decided to participate to the discussion. It was about diabetes diaries.

It turned out many of the participants shared my views and had the exact same wishes for a perfect diabetes diary.

Q4 I want all my data in one place: meter, CGM, pump, activity, food, moods etc. As automatically as possible! #isthattoomuchtoask? #gbdoc
— Andrea Limbourg (@AndreaLimbourg) October 2, 2013

Is getting that kind of a service really that hard? So far it has been. And there have been challenges. As one doctor I talked with put it: the electronic diabetes diary is a 25 year old idea, but now it finally seems feasible. Glucose meters, bolus calculators, and insulin pumps produce verbose logs, mobile phones have cameras to snap pics of meals, and pedometer apps to keep track of physical activity. Combining all that data to a single, coherent visualization seems really quite trivial.

The discussion, and hearing so many other diabetics still haven't found a good diabetes diary, encouraged me to continue developing Sensotrend towards that goal.

To top it all up, I ended up winning the #bgbingo, with a perfect match. Lucky times... :)

Any thoughts about diabetes diaries you'd like in comments? I'm listening.