What is Diabetes Technology?
When diabetes involves such an array of numbers, calculations, and lifestyle considerations, it’s hardly surprising that digital tools are there to help you deal with it all.
Diabetes management software often has an overall aim in mind: to calculate carbs and insulin for you.
Find out how diabetes technology could help your diabetes below.
Diabetes Technology Explained
A digital tool for diabetes is often simply termed a diabetes app. That’s great as a catchy, easily comprehensible term. But diabetes management software is a more precise way of describing a tool that can do even more than simple calculations.
Diabetes technology is more than just an app: it serves as a comprehensive device to manage life with diabetes.
That’s because it can have many different features, such as…
Potential functions of diabetes technology
- Counting carb intake
- Calculating insulin or carb doses
- Recording numbers from a blood glucose monitor
- Records of activity related to diabetes treatment
- Saving data in a logbook
- Exporting of data
- Overview of statistics
- Reminders to take medicine
- Feedback to motivate you
Hedia’s diabetes technology
Want to get started on a particular piece of diabetes technology? Our diabetes management software is called Hedia Diabetes Assistant (HDA), so named because we want it to assist you in making life with diabetes easier. Download the app for your mobile device and set it up to be personalised to you.
Find out below what Hedia Diabetes Assistant offers.
Dashboard
Get your important numbers at a glance on the diabetes dashboard. This is where you go to get an overview of how your diabetes is going. HDA will show…
- Active insulin – the amount of insulin estimated to be in your body
- Average blood glucose – the average of at least 28 blood glucose recordings over at most 14 days
- Time-in-range – the percentage of time you are within your target blood glucose ranges over at most 14 days
- Blood glucose graph – a visual representation of how your blood glucose has been changing over 24 hours
Logbook
Leave the notebooks and numbers scribbled on napkins behind. Get your sums all in one place by logging:
- Time of day
- Blood glucose level
- Ketones
- Number of carbs taken
- Kind of activity (walking, running, cycling, swimming, etc.)
- Time spent on the activity
- Amount of insulin taken
You can add this information manually or have it automatically entered whenever you make a new calculation (more on that in a moment).
Export your diabetes logbook to PDF, where your data is presented in a neat table which you can send by email or print off. This is especially useful if you need to show your numbers to your doctor or insurance provider.
Check food
HDA contains a food database with over 1700 food items. This is where you can check the database by using the search bar. Find your food or drink’s nutritional information, and add the carbs to your calculation.
You can favourite food items for quicker access or you can even create your own custom food item. Checking food labels for carbs every day doesn’t need to be a part of your life!
More/settings
You can personalise HDA even more, under the “More” section. Here you’ll be able to adjust settings including for notifications and personal diabetes settings.
When you first set up the app, you will be asked certain questions which you can edit later under “More”. These questions are the following:
- Insulin pen or pump?
- Blood glucose measured in mmol/L or mg/dL?
- Do you know your insulin sensitivity factor? Or do you want to use a standard formula (1800-rule or 100-rule)?
- Do you know your insulin-to-carb ratio? Or do you want to use a standard formula (500-rule)?
Under the settings, you can adjust these along with changes to insulin sensitivity and carb ratio during the day (daily intervals). Your target blood glucose level can also be adjusted as daily intervals. In addition, you can edit what you think your activity level should be as a percentage – plus more settings!
Last but not least: the calculations
At the bottom centre of the screen, you’ll find a “+” button, which is where you start the carb or insulin calculator for a recommended dose. Follow the steps to…
1) Enter your blood glucose level or wirelessly connect your NFC or Bluetooth glucose meter
2) Add the amount of carbs in your food or find the food from the database
3) Select if you have or will be exercising by choosing the type and duration of your activity. You’ll also be asked if you’ve taken insulin within the previous 4 hours.
There you have it: your personalised insulin or carb recommendation. Then add it to your logbook if you want!
Why should your diabetes technology be Hedia Diabetes Assistant?
At Hedia, our aim is to make diabetes easier, which we strive to do with an intuitive, clean, and secure app design. Hedia Diabetes Assistant is a CE-marked medical device and Hedia has received certification to the ISO 13485:2016 standard enabling us to consistently meet customer and applicable regulatory requirements.
By using your different targets and ratios, we want an assistant that works for you. As such, we think that you should be the best judge of this diabetes technology. Go ahead and try it. It’s free – you’ve got nothing to lose!
Get in touch!
Send us a mail at support@hedia.com and you’ll hear from us within 48 working hours.
Hedia Diabetes Assistant (HDA) is a medical device software registered in the Danish Medicines Agency (Lægemiddelstyrelsen). HDA has a CE-certification mark stating conformity with the EU directive for medical devices sold within the EU.
Read our user manual to get all the details of how to use HDA.