This week Telcare, makers of an FDA-cleared, cellular-enabled blood glucose meter, launched a free, companion iPhone app, called MyTelcare Diabetes Pal that helps Telcare BGM users to track their glucose readings, medications, nutrition, activities and more. The app automatically receives glucose readings from the TelcareBGM device, which means no more manual logging of blood glucose readings. Other non-Telcare BGM device users can still use the Telcare app to manually log their readings.
While there are other ways to transmit blood glucose readings to an iPhone app, like Sanofi's iPhone dongle blood glucose meter the iBGStar, Entra Health System's Bluetooth-enabled meter, or by using Glooko's $39 cord, Telcare explained to MobiHealthNews in an email that since the app was engineered to wirelessly connect to the Telcare BGM via its secure cloud server the Telcare blood glucose meter and the iPhone can be 1,000 miles away or two feet away from one another and it will still sync in real-time. The other devices require users to have both the meter and the smartphone handy.
The MyTelcare Diabetes Pal app also helps users discover trends by reviewing more than ten professionally designed graphs and charts that help users identify trends based on time of day, prescription adherence, target zones, day of the week, standard deviation, before and after meals, before and after activity, and more. The app also enables users to generate and email a one page, "physician-optimized" report in about five seconds, according to the company. What's more, all data can be exported to Microsoft Excel.
The app also provides feedback to users and their caregivers: "Patients and caregivers receive feedback from Telcare's proprietary rules-based algorithms and the entire Telcare patient community," according to the company.
More in the press release below:
PRESS RELEASE: Telcare, Inc. unveiled its new MyTelcare Diabetes Pal today, now available for free on the Apple App Store. Telcare is offering people with diabetes and their caregivers the world's first iPhone app that automatically synchronizes with a wireless glucose meter.
"Telcare's free App is designed to empower every patient by eliminating the hurdles that have made the analysis of glucose readings so time consuming," said Telcare CEO, Dr. Jonathan Javitt, MD. "We want to increase patients' understanding of their diabetes and help them and their caregivers properly manage the disease."
In January, Telcare BGM™ (glucose meter) introduced the industry's first FDA-cleared, cellular-enabled blood glucose meter. The new MyTelcare Diabetes Pal App allows patients and caregivers to use their iPhone to visualize every glucose reading sent by the Telcare BGM™ while tracking medication, nutrition, activities, and notes. The app also enables patients who don't have the Telcare BGM to manually enter their blood glucose data and track it over time. Patients and caregivers receive feedback from Telcare's proprietary rules-based algorithms and the entire Telcare patient community.
While there have been many apps designed to assist people with diabetes in tracking their own results, this is the first to automatically capture data from a blood glucose meter with no extra steps on the part of the patient. This is also the first app designed to share those results with health professionals and family members. A physician sitting at his desk can review the results of all diabetes patients in the practice and the mother sitting at her job can instantly know how her child with diabetes is doing at school.
"The support of endocrinologists and diabetes educators around the world verifies the need for this application," Dr. Javitt said. "We believe this app's innovative and intuitive design will help people with diabetes change behavior and as a result improve their health."
The MyTelcare Diabetes Pal App for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad allows people with diabetes and their caregivers to:
Track from anywhere: This new app combines the power of cellular technology with the newest Apple development tools to synchronize blood glucose, medication and nutrition data from anywhere. With each blood glucose test taken with the Telcare BGM, the app is instantly updated with the newest BG number. For non-Telcare BGM users, the App provides a user-friendly way to update each blood glucose log.
Discover trends: With over ten professionally designed graphs and charts, users are able identify trends based on Time of Day, Prescription Adherence, Target Zones, Day of the Week, Standard Deviation, Before and After Meals, Before and After Activity, and more. Users are also able to generate and email a one page, physician-optimized report in approximately 5 seconds. All data can be exported to Microsoft Excel.
Share data with others: All data are automatically stored at www.mytelcare.com, Telcare's HIPAA-compliant cloud server. Users are able to automatically share their data with health professionals, family members, and others who may be involved in their care. This feature is particularly important to the parents of children with diabetes and to the adult children of elderly people with diabetes.
By utilizing cellular technology rather than Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, devices including Telcare's glucose meter (Telcare BGM™) and the MyTelcare Diabetes Pal App can communicate with each other without the limitation of having to be physically near one another.
"Recently a severe hypoglycemic episode caused me to be rushed to the hospital," says Telcare VP Matthew Tendler, who also has Type 1 diabetes. "Although my family was over 500 miles away, they downloaded the MyTelcare App to their iPhones and saw every reading I took, in real-time. My mother's tears of relief as my diabetes responded to treatment and returned to a stable condition were enough to convince me of the App's success."
MyTelcare Diabetes Pal is available for FREE from the App Store at www.itunes.com/appstore or downloaded directly at http://bit.ly/yNeWix. The App is compatible with the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
About Telcare
Telcare is a leading provider of mHealth solutions that leverage award-winning cellular machine-2-machine technology to bridge the last mile between patients and their caregivers in order to improve the care of chronic illness. Telcare products have been awarded First Place prizes in the categories of Health, Wellness and Fitness Application and Health Enterprise Solution by CTIA and Telcare was just named a finalist in the 2012 Edison Award competition. In addition to directly reducing cost of care by improving outcomes and preventing complications, Telcare creates an ecosystem of care that provides caregivers and disease managers with previously-unavailable actionable clinical data. For more information, visit the Telcare website at www.telcare.com.
