Use Apps for Diabetes, but With Care

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi. I'm here at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) meetings in Barcelona, where I'm presenting information about the use of digital apps in the management of diabetes. I'm on the American Diabetes Association (ADA)/EASD committee for evaluating devices, and our position statement on digital apps will be coming out soon, to be published in Diabetes Care and Diabetologia.

This is a huge topic. There are more than 1 billion people on the planet who use some sort of smartphone. There are more apps than I can count, and many people use these to help take care of their health. The biggest area is in diabetes.

Now, this may seem all well and good, and I am in favor of people using apps. What I'm not in favor of is people getting medical advice in ways that I can't control or at least validate. That's an issue because basically anyone can make an app and put it on the Internet for people to use.

What Types of Apps Are Available?

We need to think about how we look at apps. The first thing is to characterize them. What I call simple apps are those that help patients with nutrition, carb counting, and fitness.