Development of a support system for diabetic patients at home using a smartphone

Recently, the number of patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) has been increasing. Because DM causes many complications, it is important for patients with DM to control their blood sugar levels. However, there is not an effective method for the patients to manage their blood sugar levels at home. Therefore, we developed a home support system for the patients by which the patient can accumulate various biological measured data and send the data to a medical institution. At the institution, a physician can check the data and provide instructions via e-mail to the patient at home. The system is composed of a smartphone used by the patient, a server installed at the medical institution and a personal computer (PC) used by the physician. The patient measures data such as weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, etc. at home and send these data to the server using the smartphone. The physician can check the patient data, including a medical and medication history, and provide instructions via e-mail to the patient using the PC. For our purpose, an Android smartphone was selected as a terminal, and the system was created using XML so that the data could be read with a web browser in any environment. We anticipate our developed system will be useful to support patients with DM at home.