Type 1 diabetes, counting carbs & interfacing with my meter.

mtswishe
mtswishe Posts: 4
in Introduce Yourself
MFP is certainly the better of the carb calculators available. As weight is not my issue, I would love to discuss maintaining good glucose levels. The issue for me is most meters have poor output/interface execution. Having used a lot of different brands and models, I find overall that the meters fall short as if no one has bothered to engage diabetics as to there needs or designers as to making function intelligent or useful. I have he'd type 1 for fifteen years and taught design for forty. From my experience and perspective, the meters are needlessly crude. I realize that they deeply discount them so we will use their strips, but even if they come free, that is no excuse. My doctors agree, but seem to have no input. What is your experience? I would love to hear it.

Replies

  • concordancia
    concordancia Posts: 5,320 Member
    I'm sorry, are you looking for a meter that will interface with your computer/app or are you referring to the general user interface?
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Not a meter, but I fell in love with an app:
    https://itunes.apple.com/app/bant-a-diabetes-app-for-epatient/id361257571?mt=8
    It was designed to engage teenagers so that they would be more complaint. So the interface is neat. I even made some twitter-sphere friends out of that experience. Helped a girl through a low sugar moment late one night.

    I had to explain to my specialists what they were seeing, though. They didn't "get" the graphs.
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
    There is a type 1 group I would suggest, as probably most general MFP users don't know and don't care about issues specific to type 1's.

    With that said, I see the meter as just that... a meter. I use the Bayer Contour Next Link, Medtronic Minimed Revel 723, and labels (or MFP) for carbs. The meter links to the pump, and I manually enter carbs in the pump for the bolus wizard and for tracking. The data entered in my pump is not only used to calculate insulin, but also can be loaded as data into the Medtronic Carelink system. So for me, the "master" device is not the meter, but the pump.
  • mtswishe
    mtswishe Posts: 4
    To concordancia: Both, actually. I am a Mac guy and that of course is a big problem despite the omnipresence of iPhones in the landscape. The one meter that actually has a Mac App has a really poor one that can only bluetooth to one device (?!), no dose calculator and crude data output. The meter that does allow carb input and computes bolus has no output to Macs and has a marginal interface (physical & visual).
  • mtswishe
    mtswishe Posts: 4
    BTW, I am not on a pump, and also I find that having to go to another app just to enter in everything again (and transferring all the numbers) does not make for a good solution for me. When I was using the VeryioSync I had to open MFP on my iPad, Insulin Calculator & Verio App on my iPhone just to get all the right numbers. Then only the output to my Dr. was an email with bitmap image of the glucose numbers and time entered. We had to hunker around the phone to have a discussion. I'm sorry but that is just lame.
    Thanks jgnatca of the heads up. I'm glad that something (and someone) helps the teens. But i am still at a loss to explain why the meters don't talk to the apps easily. I brought this up with some programer friends (big data guy, interface designer, web designer among them) and they agreed that for a few thousand dollars it is all very doable. Therefore, this is not improbable, if the meter/strip folks gave it a shot (or cared).

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