A Technology-Driven Approach for Child-Friendly Diabetes Management

Abstract

As one of the most common chronic diseases, diabetes negatively affects the lives of many people. Owing to the recent technological developments, blood sugar monitoring applications have become an important assistant means to support people with diabetes. Although, the existing blood sugar monitoring applications can demonstrate the real-time data collected from sensors for the self-monitoring purpose, they mostly are not intended for children with diabetes, even though the rate of the cases of newly diagnosed childhood type 1 diabetes increases by 3%–4% in Europe each year. Considering a child-friendly approach, We propose an application that enables parents to monitor their child’s glucose level remotely. To implement such application, we developed a plush toy that can register sensor values, synchronize with the parents’ phones and thereby help the children to cope with diabetes. The aim of the present paper is to outline the two iterations of the system development. We share the results of the expert interviews, which have been conducted in the first evaluation round and have provided important insights in terms of further development and psychological aspects. Furthermore, we highlight the positive feedback from the second evaluation round involving parents and experts, which has led us to the conclusion that the proposed system can serve as a helpful and novel approach to support children with diabetes and their parents.