A new personal health
monitoring system promises improved management of diabetes, a condition
affecting 1 in 10 adults in the UK.
Real-time blood sugar measurements are recorded via a sensor and mobile phone app using "cloud" internet technology.
The system is being trialled by diabetic athletes, cycling 2100 km over a fortnight across Europe.
Instant blood sugar monitoring could also stop marathon runners and long-distance cyclists "hitting the wall".
Diabetes is on the rise in the UK. One in 10 people in
hospital have diabetes, with a similar proportion of deaths attributable
to the disease. It is a chronic disease with no cure, but it can be
managed.
Currently about 10% of the NHS budget is spent on direct
treatment of diabetes, with a further large chunk taken up tackling
serious complications that may include kidney failure, nerve damage,
blindness and amputations.
Diabetes control typically exploits post-hoc data. Patients
might get their blood sugar levels assessed every six-months, for
example, with reports on how well they have been controlled in the
previous months.
Researchers from the Universities of Newcastle and
Northumbria have announced a new approach to diabetes management, based
around a state of the art personal health monitoring system that uses
medical sensors, mobile phones, and cloud computing.
The technology is being trialled in a sporting event across
Europe this week. A small discrete personal blood sugar sensor is worn
by each participant, linked wirelessly to the wearer's mobile phone.
Continuous monitoring
Around a hundred cyclists trialling the technology are
currently taking part in a stage race from Brussels to Barcelona, cross
the Alps and Pyrenees on the way, and will complete a 2,100 km course
with a cumulative climb of 22,000m.
All the cyclists are wearing a blood sugar monitor that works
as a small wire, picking up chemical changes to record glucose in the
body fluid when stuck just under the wearer's skin. It costs around £40
and can be worn for up to ten days, sending data wirelessly to their
mobile phone.
Most of the cyclists taking part have diabetes. Over the 13
days of the event they will wear continuous glucose monitors. The data
collected via their mobile phones is being downloaded to a "cloud" data
repository and can be analysed in real time by the scientific team back
at Newcastle and Northumbria universities.
People with Type 1 diabetes often avoid strenuous exercise
for fear of experiencing very low blood sugar and black outs. The
technology described offers a route to avoiding such hypoglycemic
episodes with real-time warnings.
Professor Mike Trenell at Newcastle University, who is
leading the trial, said: "It is really about demonstrating how much
things most of us carry in our everyday lives, mobile phones, hold the
potential to help living with diabetes.
"We can enable patients to make real-time context-based
decisions to improve their diabetes control. If we can get people to
walk 45 minutes extra every day we get an equivalent cost saving of £800
per year." When multiplied by the huge number of patients currently on
diabetes-related medication this amounts to massive saving for the NHS.
For more typical patients, it is anticipated that this type
of continuous real-time monitoring could, in future, provide relatively
cheap route for diabetes patients to monitor their blood sugar levels
and manage their health.
Used by members of the general population, or those at risk
of developing type 2 diabetes, the monitoring system could offer an
early warning health check, and might be used to help demonstrate the
health benefits of modifying life style, providing instant positive
feedback.
For the road-cycling athletes the data are being combined
with heart rates, cycling cadence, speed and climb rates in a linked
dataset. During the current cycling event, participants' data can even
be accessed
via the web.
These sorts of personal performance datasets are becoming
increasingly popular among cyclists, runners and other recreational
athletes, with a wide range of web-based applications available for
recording one's achievements (or otherwise).
For more serious professional endurance athletes it is easy
to see how monitoring blood sugar levels during activities such as
marathons or events such as the Tour de France could be useful.
"Hitting the wall" in running, or the equivalent "bonking" in
cycling occurs when sugar reserves are depleted and blood sugar drops.
By personal monitoring, participants would be able to maximise their
performance by avoiding such sugar catastrophes.
LEAVE A COMMENT.
