ESPE Abstracts (2018) 89 WG4.3

Children’s Hospital AUF DER BULT, Hannover, Germany


Global growth in the use of mobile phones, the so-called smartphones, makes them a powerful platform to help provide tailored health, delivered conveniently to patients. These devices are developing rapidly mainly with regard to information processing, design, features and connectivity with other devices. Modern treatment and monitoring of type 1 diabetes is being supported by rapid evolving technology as pumps for continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion and sensors for continuous subcutaneous glucose monitoring, both providing data that can be processed by smartphone apps. Systematic reviews of available studies examining the effectiveness of interventions with smartphone apps to promote lifestyle changes such as physical activity, physical fitness, modification of dietary habits, and quality of life (QoL) in patients with diabetes show that the use of such apps seems to improve lifestyle factors, to strengthen the perception of self-care and specially to decrease HbA1c. However, the results had severe heterogeneity that was explained by the frequency of health care professionals (HCP) feedback. HCP functionality was important to achieve clinical effectiveness. Nowadays, there is an increasing number of apps designed to give guidance to patients with Type 1 diabetes during activity or exercise combining diabetes-specific with fitness data sources. Current available apps include Engine 1 by Glucose Advisors, Diabits, Glucose Buddy, MySugr, One Drop, bant and Glucozone (Type 2 diabetes only), whereas others like the ‘Lilly Type 1 Diabetes Exercise App’ or the ‘T1Dexi exercise and nutrition app’ are under development. Although there is some indication that the use of diabetes apps is not associated with an excess of severe episodes of hypoglycemia, current evidence concerning the safety of diabetes apps is scarce. Thus, future long-lasting studies are necessary to further evaluate the effectiveness of these rapid evolving diabetes apps with direct attention to safety issues, particularly for apps with bolus calculator functionality.

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