Diabetes Digital Coach

A wearable sensor and smartphone app will nudge people with diabetes to check their blood sugar, take insulin, or eat a snack at the moment they need to. The Diabetes Digital Coach Test Bed builds the infrastructure—wireless sensors, software, and a personal data firewall—to connect monitoring devices so that people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes can self-manage their condition in real time, rather than relying on memory or scheduled clinic visits. The problem is that diabetes requires constant, split-second decisions about food, activity, and medication, and most people lack the tools to make those decisions with confidence. If the system works, it could reduce dangerous blood sugar swings and hospital admissions by giving patients and their healthcare teams live data. An additional benefit is that peers, carers, and clinicians can intervene sooner when the data flags a problem. The project also addresses a less visible but critical issue: who owns the data. Patients will control access through a personal firewall, deciding when to share their information with analytics engines or local health records. Aggregated, anonymised data could eventually give public health teams a real-time population-wide view of diabetes health status, allowing them to nudge entire communities toward better habits.