Diabetes management apps are now a thing globally. But are they truly beneficial? Or are they simply another facade that doesn’t offer any real benefits?
Worse still, is it possible that they pose any genuine concern? This post provides comprehensive answers to these queries and aims to resolve the existing mystery surrounding the use of diabetes apps.
What to expect?
- The Benefits of Diabetes Management Apps
- Regulation of Diabetes Apps
- The Issues That Diabetes Management Apps Present
The Benefits of Diabetes Management Apps
Having a virtual assistant that helps keep your blood sugar levels in check can go a long way in managing your condition. However, how exactly do these apps ensure this? Let’s find out.
Meal Planning
Diabetes management apps are great for meal planning. People with diabetes cannot consume all kinds of food and only need the best food that doesn’t worsen their health and condition.
Diabetes management apps could work as meal planners and help patients plan their meals better. Top apps offer short-term and long-term services that allow users to set a range of plans like 7-day meal plans, monthly meal plans, or annual meal planning.
The meals suggested by these apps are generally rich in fiber and protein and, most importantly, don’t trigger a rise in blood sugar. This efficient planning generally makes it easier for people with diabetes to stock the right food that keeps their health and condition balanced.
Top apps are updated from time to time to incorporate new foods and flag off high sugar foods.
Exercise Planning
People with diabetes know the importance of exercise for building and maintaining a fit and healthy lifestyle. Diabetes health apps are great for planning exercise programs, and the good thing is that most apps have different ranges of exercises to meet the varying endurance and strengths of users.
Most digital health and exercise planner apps start with moderate intensity exercises like brisk walking to incorporate the needs of patients who have never exercised before. Over time, these exercises get more intense; still, patients can constantly adjust to the level that best suits them.
Glucose Monitoring
Another essential benefit of diabetes apps is that they’re great for monitoring sugar levels. Sugar level monitoring is vital for diabetics, and having apps that make it easy for them to tell their sugar range can help keep them on track.
Lack of sugar levels monitors could lead to patients being complacent with their health program, exposing them to risk. However, with a good diabetes app, patients can successfully watch their blood sugar levels and keep it under the safe range.
Regulation of Diabetes Apps
While there’s no doubt regarding the benefits of diabetes management apps, they pose several concerns. These concerns have led to calls from medical bodies to regulate them for patients’ safety.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA), in collaboration with the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), carried out a wide-scale analysis on diabetes digital health technology and established some interesting conclusions.
Both organizations discovered that diabetes apps properly developed by experts did offer benefits to users. However, there was also a large influx of similar apps on the internet, developed by programmers that know very little about how diabetes works.
The study also showed that while the different health organizations, such as the Food and Drug Association (FDA), are concerned about the lack of regulation of these apps, keeping track of them was highly difficult.
Summarily, regulation of diabetes management apps was impossible, and only a select few have been successfully tested and proven helpful.
The Issues That Diabetes Management Apps Present
The growth of diabetes management solutions has been exponential over the years. There are not just hundreds of diabetes control apps; the number has grown to hundreds of thousands. This explosive continuous growth makes it difficult for any authority to keep track of what’s going on.
The good thing is that some of these apps have been tested and indeed considered helpful for diabetes control.
However, the apps that have gone through tests are incredibly fewer than those that haven’t, and this means that most of them act independently without any watchful eye over them. As expected, such freedom usually triggers concerns among users and professional medical bodies. Some of the significant concerns are stated below:
Data Privacy
One of the biggest concerns regarding diabetes apps is the possible lack of data privacy. While regulatory bodies try to ensure that mobile health apps follow standard rules, they don’t have the platform to control the development of these apps.
These loopholes allow app owners to use submitted users’ data as they wish. Malicious software creators could literally steal patients’ data in the guise of providing them with a health plan and sell them to third-party companies. The disturbing part is that software creators go scot-free when data theft happens.
It’s important to note that not all apps fall into the above category. The Klinio App, for example, is a digital software created by top diabetes management experts and is recommended by health practitioners to many patients in the United States.
Reliable digital health apps have proven to be more than helpful in many ways, and the most important feature is their commitment to customer data protection. Just like Klinio, other digital diabetes apps offer top-notch services for patients.
Technological Issues
Technology issues, such as digital glitches, are the second concern associated with diabetes apps, necessitating better regulation.
Some of these apps are usually not excellently developed. Hence, they could read wrong information and even offer plans that don’t correlate with the needs of people with diabetes.
Notably, some apps may start off well, but over time, they could be riddled with different poor performances that frustrate users’ plans to use them.
In addition, there’s also the need for software providers to update these apps continuously. A customer will need to keep up to date with new maintenance or run at risk of working with false or outdated information.
Solutions to Some of These Concerns
Getting the solution to most of the concerns surrounding diabetes apps is much more feasible through personal commitment by the providers. There’s no real system that allows regulatory bodies to control the design of poor diabetes management apps. Therefore, it’s the responsibility of digital app developers to make apps that offer excellent services.
Another thing that patients can do is to use apps recommended by health practitioners instead of just downloading any app. Also, they could research the background of the developers and see if they’re experts in such fields before trusting their apps.
For example, the developers of the Klinio app are experts in diabetes management and have a dedicated and resourceful diabetes blog for patients on how to live healthily and happily.
Conclusion
Diabetes apps are here to stay, now more than ever. Medical practitioners now recommend top-rated ones to help patients live healthier and happier lives. However, given the numerous faux apps available today, it’s incumbent that you conduct adequate research to enable you to select a credible option.