How wearable and mobile devices can help people with diabetes
Key Takeaways
For people with diabetes, personalized care is the key to living a longer, healthier life
Wearables and new technology help make life better for people with diabetes.
A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) monitors your glucose levels more closely, reducing hassle while helping improve diabetes control.
An insulin pump makes the use of insulin therapy more convenient, and can deliver a continuous low dose of insulin for those who need this.
Fitness trackers can help you to meet your physical activity goals and also allow you to see the impact of exercise on your blood sugar.
Mobile apps can be useful in many ways, including helping you to track your carbohydrate intake and to keep track of your diabetes medications.
Your diabetes care team can give you personalized recommendations on the devices that may be most helpful for you.
Diabetes is a chronic condition, and it’s important to manage it in order to avoid serious complications. Staying consistent with managing blood sugar helps people with diabetes to live longer, healthier lives.
This involves measuring blood sugar levels regularly, and adjusting treatment to keep blood sugar in a healthy range.
Fortunately, advancements in technology have now made it easier for people with diabetes to manage their condition, using a variety of wearable and mobile devices.
In this article, we’ll talk about some of these options, and how they may be able to help you or your loved one gain better control of diabetes, while also making blood sugar management easier and more convenient.
Types of Diabetes Wearables and Devices
There are a few different types of wearables and other devices that can be useful for people with diabetes. They may help with blood sugar measurement, with treatments (such as insulin), or with maintaining the healthiest possible lifestyle. Here are some of the most useful pieces of technology for people with diabetes.
Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Systems
One of the major challenges for people with diabetes is monitoring their blood sugar. When it’s too high, the excess sugar damages the body, which leads to the complications of diabetes. When it’s too low, the brain can’t function properly, which causes major complications and can even be fatal in severe cases.
The traditional way of monitoring blood sugar is to use a glucometer. This involves using a fingerstick to obtain a drop of blood, which is placed on a test strip and inserted into the machine. This method of testing can be a hassle, and is often difficult to do when out of the house. In addition, this method only allows you to test your blood sugar a few times a day at most.
In order to monitor blood sugar more closely, some people with diabetes use a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM. This is a wearable device that monitors your glucose levels on a continuous basis. A sensor is inserted under the skin, and is replaced every 10 to 14 days. Because it’s waterproof, you can keep the sensor in place full-time, even while showering or swimming. This avoids the need for multiple fingersticks each day.
The data from a CGM is delivered to your smartphone, allowing you to keep track of it easily. Using a CGM, a person with diabetes can monitor their glucose levels continuously, instead of only a few times per day. The app connected to the CGM will also detect trends in your glucose level, and will alert you when it’s trending towards being too high or too low, allowing you to take action before a major event occurs.
With NOVI Magnum, NOVI’s diabetes treatment program, you get
One specialist doctor consultation
One dietitian consultation
Expert coaching and regular reviews by your dietitian through our mobile app for one month
1 FreeStyle Libre Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM)
Insulin Pumps
In addition to monitoring blood sugar, it’s important to take action to help keep it controlled. Although some people with diabetes can accomplish this with oral medications, others need insulin to help keep their blood sugar from rising too high. It’s important to properly control the dose of insulin, because if too much insulin is injected, then the blood sugar will fall too low, which can be dangerous.
Traditionally, people who use insulin therapy have needed to give themselves regular injections of insulin, often multiple times per day. However, insulin pumps have now made the delivery of insulin far more convenient.
How do insulin pumps work? These devices deliver insulin through a small cannula inserted under the skin. A new cannula is inserted every few days into a slightly different location on the body. The pump itself is a small box that’s usually clipped to the person’s waistband.
An insulin pump can provide a continuous low dose of insulin (known as basal insulin), which replaces long-acting forms of insulin. It can also add extra bolus insulin to help your body process the food that you eat. Like CGMs, insulin pumps also integrate with your smartphone, allowing you to easily monitor and control your insulin levels even when you’re not at home. In some cases, an insulin pump can even integrate with a CGM, allowing it to adjust your insulin dose in response to your glucose level.
The insulin pump will record the amounts of insulin that were used and the timing of them. By looking at this along with data from your CGM, your doctor can adjust your treatment plan as needed to get the best possible results.
Mobile Apps for Diabetes Management
Besides the apps that connect with devices like CGMs and insulin pumps, there are also other diabetes management apps that can be helpful for some people. For example, you can use an app to count the carbohydrates in your food, in order to help you maintain a healthy diabetes-friendly diet. You simply input the food that you’re eating, and the app will keep track of your intake of carbs and other nutrients. This can be extremely useful to help you ensure that you’re eating a diabetes-friendly diet.
In addition, you can use apps to set reminders for taking your diabetes medications. It’s important to use these medications consistently to get the best results, but it can be hard for most people to manage this amidst the chaos of daily life. With an app, you won’t have to worry about forgetting your medication, because the app will remind you. If you need to remember to check your blood sugar because you’re not using a CGM, you can also use an app to remind you of this.
Activity and Fitness Trackers
Another crucial part of a diabetes-friendly lifestyle is exercise. To make sure that you’re getting enough exercise, it’s very helpful to use an activity tracker. Many smartwatches and phones will keep track of your activity, including how much time you spent exercising and how many steps you took that day. This allows you to optimize your exercise plan and ensure that you’re meeting your physical activity goals.
Tracking your activity also allows you to see the impact of exercise on your blood sugar. By comparing your blood sugar data to the data from your fitness tracker, you’ll be able to determine what happens to your glucose levels when you exercise. This helps your doctor to optimize your treatment plan to ensure that your glucose levels don’t drop too low when you’re exercising.
Wearable Biometric Sensors
A variety of serious health conditions, such as heart disease, are more common in people with diabetes. Comprehensive health tracking can help to determine whether you’re at an increased risk for these conditions, and to detect early signs of conditions like heart disease. This gives you the opportunity to take action to help keep yourself healthy.
There are a variety of wearable sensors that can track information like your heart rate. This is usually done through a smartwatch, although a phone can also be used to measure some data. In many cases, the data is monitored through an app, which will alert you if it detects a potentially worrisome trend.
Benefits and Impact of Wearables on Diabetes Management
Using wearable devices can help with diabetes management in a number of ways.
Real-time data and trends analysis. CGMs allow you to get information about your glucose level in real time, rather than only a few discrete times per day. They also let you know when your sugar level is trending too high or too low, so you can take early action and avoid complications.
Treatment adherence. It can be challenging for anyone to remember to take medication on a regular basis. Apps can help to ensure that you’re sticking with your treatment plan, so you get the best possible results. An insulin pump ensures that you get your insulin therapy as needed, so you don’t have to remember to perform regular injections.
Personalized care. By keeping track of your glucose levels on a continuous and long-term basis, wearables can help to optimize your glycemic control. Information about your glucose levels can be compared with data about your insulin use or other treatments, allowing your doctor to adjust your treatments as needed to keep your blood sugar in a healthy range as often as possible.
Remote monitoring and telemedicine. The data from wearable devices and apps can be shared remotely with your healthcare provider. Using this data, they can adjust your treatment plan during virtual healthcare visits. This reduces the need for frequent in-person visits, which can be a significant hassle for many people with diabetes.
The only real downside of wearables and other devices is that there’s a learning curve associated with starting to use a new device. Either the person with diabetes or their caregiver will have to invest some time in learning how to use it properly.
However, because of the increased convenience offered by these devices, this investment of time is more than offset by the time that you save on your diabetes management over the years – along with the improved blood sugar control and resulting lower risk of complications.
Personalized Diabetes Care
For people with diabetes, personalized care is the key to living a longer, healthier life. Our NOVI Magnum clients receive care from a whole team of professionals, including doctors, nutritionists, and health coaches.
We recognize that lifestyle is just as important as medications in treating diabetes, and we offer tailored guidance and support to each client to help them achieve their goals.
We also recommend specific wearables or other mobile devices that may be helpful, and continuously keep up with technological advances that can help our clients better manage diabetes. This is the kind of care you can expect from our NOVI method of care.
In addition, we have our own app, NOVIFY, which is custom-designed to keep track of the relevant data and facilitate easy communication between our clients and their healthcare teams. We believe that technology should be used to help make life better for people with diabetes.
