
PredictBGL is a diabetes management app predicting fluctuations in blood sugar levels
A chronic disorder that touches more than 1.5 million Australians, diabetes requires careful and lifelong management.
Seeking a way to streamline the diabetes management process for himself and his daughter led entrepreneur Simon Carter to create PredictBGL, an insulin dosage app for people for Type 1 diabetes. The app allows users track their food intake and exercise, meshing it together to calculate insulin dosages and predict fluctuations in blood sugar levels.
Typically, Carter explained, parents of children with Type 1 diabetes patients have to buy expensive devices such as glucose trackers to help monitor blood sugar levels. The device, he said, sits under the skin and measures the blood sugar level of the person every five minutes, notifying parents if the user’s blood sugar levels gets too low.
“It’s $5,000 to buy one and $2,000 a year to run it,” Carter said.
The device is predominantly used to monitor people with Type 1 diabetes overnight, a time when patients can be at higher risk due to their blood sugar level dropping while they sleep. This risk factor, Carter explained, is even higher in children.
“If they have too much insulin overnight they’re not aware if their blood sugar gets low, and can actually die overnight. It’s something that is a huge concern to both parents of kids and adults with Type 1 diabetes,” he said.
“You never really know what’s going to happen when you inject. You’re really relying on getting the right amount and the right sleep. And often you have to take a ballpark guess of the amount of insulin to take.”
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