Today Ascensia Diabetes Care UK launched the latest version of its Contour Diabetes app, a tool that helps people self-manage their diabetes, in the UK and Ireland. The app is designed to connect to the company’s Contour One Next blood glucose meter. 

“This latest upgrade to the Contour Diabetes app provides patients with a smarter tool that can help to make the self-management of their diabetes easier,” Ros Barker, country head of UK and Ireland for Ascensia Diabetes Care, said in a statement. “At Ascensia we are listening to feedback from people with diabetes about their needs, and are continuing to invest in the further development of the Contour Diabetes app, so that we can provide solutions that make diabetes self-management better, easier, and smarter.” 

The new version of the app will include a feature called My Patterns, which helps identify suboptimal patterns in blood glucose results. The company says this feature will help users improve their patterns by giving them reminders and testing plans. The feature will also provide users with possible causes for the suboptimal pattern, and resources for how to address the issue. 

The new version will also feature 11 different test reminder plans, the ability to view insulin doses and carb intake next to to blood glucose readings, a blood sugar diary, and the ability to export data as a CSV file. 

In 2016, Ascensia Diabetes Care received FDA clearance for Contour Next One, which has the ability to connect to both the latest Contour Diabetes app and the previous one. It officially launched in the US in 2017. 

“Self-management is critical in diabetes. One of the keys to effective diabetes self-management for patients is to provide them with tools that can help them to understand how their lifestyle or activities affect their diabetes and how they can make adjustments,” Heather Daly, an independent nurse consultant for the project, said in a statement. “Digital and mobile technologies have significant potential to [help] people with diabetes improve their self-management behaviors through personalized solutions. The new Contour Diabetes app represents a real advance in the use of data for diabetes management by identifying sub-optimal patterns and providing tailored reminders that can support patients to make improvements.”