Research to improve smartphone apps for diabetes management

An OU PhD student is researching why people with chronic conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, are resistant to using smartphone apps to manage their disease.

Dmitri Katz, a PhD student in the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, notes that while smartphone apps could offer the promise of affordable, convenient, and personalized disease management assistance, their take-up remains low.

“While mobile technologies such as blood glucose meters have long been an essential part of diabetes care,” said Dmitri, “designing interfaces that more explicitly support the decision making process remains challenging.”

This research identifies how current apps fail to meet actual user needs for emotional support and understanding of their diabetes data. With the goal of overcoming these barriers, this research is serving as a foundation for a series of interdisciplinary design workshops across Europe. In coordination with industry partner Roche Diabetes Care and their Berlin based Design Co-Innovation Lab, these one-day events bring together patients, health care professionals, designers, and scientists to explore new ways of enabling diabetes self-management.

Workshops are being held in Germany and the UK in December 2017.

Find out more and book a place.

Wearable technologies for health will also be discussed by Blaine Price, Professor of Computing in the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics at the OU, when he delivers his inaugural lecture, Am I normal? on Tuesday 28 November.

Find out more and book a place.