Barranquilleros create ‘app’ to help patients with diabetes

Students of the Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering Program of the Caribbean Autonomous University designed an application capable of remotely monitoring diabetic patients through wireless mobile technologies, which allows the user to access specialized monitoring in real time.

The application, called APPGLUCO, works with phones that use the Android operating system and was created in 2015 as a degree project.She underwent a two -month proof period with four patients and a doctor, with "satisfactory" results, according to Orlando Perea Campo, who together with Kevin Quintero were the authors of this development.

“At the moment the application is already developed and completed.We are in a marketing phase, seeking support from the health sector, because this would provide economy to EPS and patients.It also prevents the patient from neglecting and generating higher hospitalization expenses due to the lack of permanent glucose control.It is a pioneer technological advance on the coast and even in the country.It is necessary to clarify that in Bogotá there was a similar device, but that he never managed to be applied to patients, ”Perea explained.

How does it work?The patient measures glucose levels with a glucometer and the data enters the application entering with a user and a password.That information is received by the prosecuted and categorized doctor on his phone, and also has the possibility of reviewing his patient's history.From there, the specialist may recommend or prescribe what he considers from the same application.

APPGLUCO allows the doctor to see their user list, which are discriminated against according to glucose levels.If they are normal, a table with a green bar appears, if they are above normal levels the bar will be red, and if the figures are below the appropriate level (hypoglycemia) a yellow bar will appear.In this way, the researchers managed to make those patients with abnormal levels of glucose prioritize in the list of the doctor.

For Perea Campo, this product responds to the needs that people have to access a specialized health service, especially in senses or municipalities.Therefore, the application was developed for people with diabetes treatment, which is a disease that suffers more than 3 million people in Colombia, according to data from the Ministry of Health delivered in mid -2016, and who takes on the lives of another 20,000 to theyear in the country.A contribution to the health of local communities through a much more Creole tool within what is known as telemedicine.

Objective

The main objective of this application is to mediate between the patient and the doctor, allowing time savings and displacement costs to the site where the face -to -face monitoring is normally performed.“In this tool, even the patient can ask the doctor questions, read his history about his glucose levels and even recommendations in diets.Soon we are thinking of adding the photographs option, to make more exhaustive checks, ”he adds.

According to Perea, “patients were very interested during the test stage, especially since the application tries to be simple.They access quickly, even though their ages, on many occasions, range between 58 and 70 years.In addition, the response time is almost immediate.In approximately 20 seconds doctors can respond to the concerns and data provided by patients. ”

unique

The application differs in the market from other platforms available for having a manual and automatic monitoring mechanism.Although byNow only the manual option is available.

“In the United States there are platforms connected to glucometers that have Bluetooth device, from where data is sent directly to the smartphone, it is an automatic method that we are contemplating to develop later.

On the other hand, with APPGLUCO, there is manual mechanism, where the patient is the one who sends the information.Additionally, making the application compatible only with glucometers of this type would be very expensive for patients, so we have only enabled the manual system, thinking of those patients with scarce diabetes, ”he explained.

According to Perea, the subscription to the application would cost, on average, about 20,000 pesos.For now, APPGLUCO has not launched to the public and was only developed for cell phones with Android operating system, even compatible with older models devices.