Monday, November 18, 2013

Our first Slush

Last Wednesday and Thursday it was time for Slush, the huge startup conference in Helsinki. Slush is all about startups, investors and media getting together to make contacts and learn what's going on in Finland and globally. For a small and yet quite unknown startup like us, it is an important way to meet the investors and also make the people aware that we exist.

We got a demo booth at Health Demo Area on Thursday 14 November, World Diabetes Day. And yet, that was not all! We were also told - only a couple of days before Slush - that we would get to launch our product at Health Track, meaning a 5 minute pitch for the audience interested in health topics. Brilliant!

The launch went really good. Mikael's speech was touching and he got a lot of positive feedback and even hugs from strangers who had heard him talk (in the pic he's presenting not his abs but his insulin pump). Diabetes is such a common disease, almost everyone knows someone with diabetes, and the ways to keep the condition better in control are very welcome.


We were also privileged to have plenty of visitors at our booth. We showed them our first demo version and explained countless times what we do and why that is so important. We also met many potential partners - we believe in cooperation and combining our strengths.


One last thing Slush rewarded us with was that they wanted to write about us in their blog.

In general, for us Slush was a success. We met investors and made good contacts, launched our automated diabetes diary and got many people talk about us. Thank you Slush, thank you all who were there. With this experience it's good to continue our work.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Time to sign up!

November 14 is the World Diabetes Day. It is also the day that we get to launch our service in the Slush startup conference. To celebrate both events, we're giving full 6 months free use of our service for everyone who signs up on that day!

The address for signing up is signup.sensotrend.com

Sign up and let other people with diabetes know of this opportunity as well!

We will go live in Finland early next year and internationally later 2014. The free time will of course start when we go live in your home country. That will happen sooner if we get more signups from your area, so consider sharing the signup link with all the people with diabetes you know!

Monday, November 11, 2013

Presenting Sensotrend, the Automated Diabetes Diary

For our blog readers, this is a sneak preview on the product launch on November 14, the World Diabetes Day.


I'm Mikael from Sensotrend. We've launched an Automated Diabetes Diary.

I'm a Type 1 diabetic myself. My body no longer produces the insulin hormone, rather I must inject it myself using an external device. If my body does not get insulin, I'll be in a coma in 24 hours, and dead soon after that. So I make sure I'll always have insulin available.


Then I have the problem of knowing how much insulin to inject in any given situation. Hormones generally work together, and if you're only controlling one of them, it's really tricky. No two bodies are the same, no two life situations are the same. Diabetes treatment is highly individual, and all people with diabetes must constantly track themselves, and learn from the data they gather.


There are now over 370 million people with diabetes in the world, and the yearly treatment costs are almost half a trillion dollars. And the numbers are just growing (up-to-date information will be published on the World Diabetes Day).


Back to tracking and learning. Traditionally, all the tracking has been done with a logbook. Nowadays there are also smartphone applications available. I need to log my blood glucose measurements, estimated amount of carbohydrates in everything I eat and drink, physical activity or lack of it, and the insulin dosages I have used. The problem for me is the amount of work it requires to keep such a diary.


You know, most of that data already exists somewhere, or can be tracked really easily. The diabetes devices produce rich logs, a pedometer app on my smartphone tracks my activity automatically on the background. I can choose a meal logger app to just snap a picture of what I'm eating.

The point is that I want to use the best tools available for tracking all this information, and not transfer it from place to place manually.


That's how we manage tracking. How about learning?

What's been missing so far has been a way to get all this information together, in a way that's meaningful for people with diabetes and their healthcare professionals.

This is what we do.


There's an emerging market of Patient-Centric Health Information Exchanges like Taltioni and Microsoft HealthVault. They are systems parallel to the Electronic Health Records you find in hospitals. Patient-Centric Health Information Exchanges are focused on preventive care and after care, where patients perform the measurements and are more in charge of their own treatment.

We integrate data from all the apps and devices to these Health Information Exchanges.


Once we have all the data in these central locations, we visualize it to diabetics and their healthcare professionals. They can analyze how certain kind of activity or meal affects blood glucose levels or weight.


We want the healthcare organizations to learn from this data as well.

They can use it to rationalize use of resources. For instance, instead of a fixed quota of glucose test strips per patient, they can provide just the amount of strips that person is using. This eliminates waste. With more data they can also see which kind of treatment and support each individual diabetic requires.

In the future, we want to use Big Data Analytics to mine this data. If a group of people with diabetes are doing really well compared to another group with similar parameters, we can see what these well performing ones are doing right and what the others may learn from them.


We'll be presenting our automated diabetes diary on a stand in the Health Demo Area of the Slush conference.


There you can meet the team. We're currently two type 1 diabetics that know diabetes and software really well, and a PR and marketing person.

We're looking to add some financial expertise to our core team, by the way, so please spread the word. And we're also looking for financing.


The thing I want to leave the audience with on the World Diabetes Day, is that everyone signing up at signup.sensotrend.com on November 14 will get 6 months free use of our application when we launch in their market. That will be early next year in Finland, and internationally later next year.

And for you, our dear blog readers, the offer is valid starting from now! The web page is already live, so go for it. And if you know any people with diabetes who might be interested, please spread the word! Please also forward the message to all healthcare professionals, financial experts, and investors you think might be interested in cooperating with us.

Thanks for reading! And as always, feedback is warmly welcomed. It's now even easier to leave the comment below, no account or registration is required. We're looking forward to hearing from you.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Product Launch

We'll launch our service, the Sensotrend Diabetes Diary at Slush startup conference on the World Diabetes Day, November 14, 2013. That's a week from now!

Check out our main page at sensotrend.com that day. The early adopters registering that day will get access to the service free of charge! Stay tuned for more details, and please spread the word to all diabetics you know.

We're super excited to be able to launch the product big time in a big startup conference, and especially on that special day.