New Smart Phone Technology Helps Diabetes Patients Better Manage Their Blood Sugar Levels

Endocrinologist Dr. Jeremy Pettus explains

From the LifeMInute team

For the 26 million Americans living with diabetes, monitoring blood sugar is a crucial but tedious daily task. Endocrinologist and diabetic Dr. Jeremy Pettus of the University of California-San Diego's Department of Endocrinology lets us in on the latest technology to help diabetes patients manage their blood sugar from their smart phones.

Dr. Pettus, who has been living with Type 1 diabetes for more than 20 years, reminds us that it's extremely important to check your blood sugar regularly and record those results. However, up until recently, that meant checking your blood sugar and manually entering those results into a logbook, which takes time and is very easy to forget to do.

"It's really kind of out of touch and out of date with how we live our lives today with all these kinds of technologies coming out," Dr. Pettus says, "so I'm really excited about this new generation of blood sugar meters that are starting to link our blood sugars with our smart phone devices."

The OneTouch Verio Sync is one of the newly released meters equipped with tons of unique features. When patients check their blood sugar, it automatically and wirelessly sends that information to their iPhones. They then can click on the app on their phones to access a summary page with data such as what their average blood sugar has been over the last 14 days.

Also available are color-coded graphs where you can see what percent of time you've been in or outside of your blood sugar range. "It actually automatically puts it into a log book format for you, so no more recording that manually," says Dr. Pettus.

By clicking on the screen and tapping "share," you can email or text any of this information to your healthcare provider, family, friends, or anybody you want involved in your diabetes management. This makes it easier to stay attuned to your condition and make management decisions.

It makes it easier for physicians as well, as Dr. Pettus attests, "It can be frustrating at times when a patient comes to see me and they have their blood sugar meter, but I can't download the results, or maybe they forgot their log book in the car, but with the OneTouch Verio Sync, they can literally hand me their iPhone and we can go over all their blood sugar results together."

Even after patients leave the doctor's office, they can email their physicians the results to keep them in the loop in order make better diabetes management decisions and meet their goals faster.

For more information patients can go to onetouch.com.

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