Monitoring Glucose and Physical Activity Using Mobile Phone: A Proposed System

Abstract

Being able to monitor glucose and physical activity (PA) levels using a simple and efficient manner is critical for preventing diabetes complications and improving diabetics' quality of life. The mobile phone, because of its almost ubiquitous use and flexibility in extending its functions, has great potential to serve for this purpose. PURPOSE: To extend the mobile phone system to both glucose and PA monitoring functions and to design a diabetes monitoring center which can track not only patients' blood sugar, but steps taken, time elapsed and distance traveled. METHOD: The original system consists of three components: Blood glucose meter, mobile phone and a diabetes monitoring center. The blood glucose meter is integrated with the mobile phone. Thus, not only will the system have the measurement function, but it will also use the short message service (SMS) to send data and receive expert's diagnosis. The monitoring center's hardware consists of a server and a MC35I GSM module, the center's software commands the MC35I to send/receive short messages and an expert system is installed. Based on an extensive literature review, product searches and some pilot testing, PA assessment can be integrated. RESULT: PA assessments and blood glucose monitoring meter can be integrated in the mobile phone. By using the cell phone, patients send their blood sugar levels, step-count, and distance to the monitoring center, which in turn will track patients' measures and provide feedback and prescriptions for the patients (see Figure 1).Figure: 1 System design diagramCONCLUSION: To prevent diabetes complications and improve diabetics' quality of life, a mobile phone based glucose and PA monitor system was proposed. A prototype of the system is under development.