Imagine having to keep track of your diabetic son's constantly changing blood sugar levels by typing each individual reading into an email. Then, once in the doctor's office, having to spend a chunk of your precious time with your clinician waiting for her to download that data.
That was the plight of Lori Atkins, whose son has Type 1 diabetes, until this March, when the Atkins joined a pilot project involving Apple's HealthKit. Pediatric endocrinologist Rajiv Kumar, MD, is using HealthKit - a new technology that can securely share health data with third-party applications - to more easily monitor the blood-sugar levels of 10 patients.
A recent Inside Stanford Medicine article describes the project:
Patients like Blake wear a continuous glucose monitor that sends 288 blood-sugar readings a day to an Apple mobile device through Bluetooth. The data is securely transmitted via HealthKit into the patient’s electronic medical record at Stanford Children’s Health through the MyChart app.
The system also improves clinical outcomes, Kumar said: "Our endocrinologists are now able to easily assess large volumes of blood-sugar data between clinic visits — and quickly identify trends that could benefit from insulin dosing regimen changes."
Kumar is planning to expand the use of the app to more of his patients.
Previously: A look at the MyHeart Counts app and the potential of mobile technologies to improve human health, Harnessing mobile health technologies to transform human health and A picture is worth a thousand words: Researchers use photos to see how Type 1 diabetes affects kids
Photo by Norbert von der Groeben
