Online BG Diaries

The team are now looking to implement new features and one requested in the initial meeting was an online blood glucose diary. I'd like to canvas for opinions on what features you'd like to see if such a thing were implemented. First question though - would you want one? There's no point in spending time developing a feature if it wasn't going to be used.

Next - what would you want it to do? Here's some thoughts:

• Show BG results that you have input in the same format as the one you receive during DAFNE Week
  
• Allow you to share it with others (optionally) and integrate it with forums in case you wanted to ask for opinions on ratios/trends.
  
• Allow you to set specific targets and show whether each reading is above, in, or below target.
  
• Be printable so you can take it to reviews and doctors appointments
  

Hi Simon,

This is of particluar interest to me and I hope you dont mind me sharing my thoughts. I was given three BG diaries when I finished the course and Im but a couple of pages away from the end of my supply! To my great suprise (in my pre-Dafne state, I had avoided writing them down EVER), I now intend to keep this going....until I get a better hobbie anyhow....

The closest thing I found online was a Leceister Hospital own version of the diary, available for download. Not as nice as the Dafne produced one, but when printed was too large. I started to devise my own (my Dafne team dont do an on-going supply). Main features for me are...

* Size, I find the current diary too large and bulky for fitting inside my kitbag
* Preferably, the size of a passport as I would like one that fits a passport holder and get myself a nice protective case (and defer away from my current decoration of spots of blood from my fingers!)
* Somewhere for an indication of ratio's as I differ on working and non-working days
* More colums. I test more than the number of columns if I have hypo'd or been to the gym.

Ive just read that back and I appear to have a lot of requirements for a very small page! Overall, Im happy with the format we have now with the current diary - I just cant get my hands on any!!! An online option would be very useful for me and I look forward to what you come up with.

Cheers
Lou

Hi Louisa,

Thanks for your post. A lot of your requirements seem to relate to a paper-based diary - is this correct? At the moment I'm just looking at implementing one that you can update via this website, and in the future share your diary (if you want) with other site users. Your paper-based comments do still come in handy though, as I need to define a layout for printing the online diary.

With regard to the 'more columns' request - how many is a good number for you? There has to be a tradeoff here between how many entries you can make into the diary, and how it looks on a page (more entries per day may become confusing).

Please feel free to add more comments, the more user feedback we get the better we can make it!

Thanks,

Simon

Hi Simon, I've tried a few entries in the online diary. One issue is that if I make a CP or QA correction I like to show it in my paper diary in the form "8+1" (i.e. 8CPs for the food I am about to eat, plus one CP correction, or 8 units of QA plus one unit for a correction). The on-line diary won't let me do this, it seems to require a single number entry. I guess I could indicate that I have made a correction in the comments box, but I'm also using the comments box to indicate QA ratios etc. Is there any reason why the CP and QA boxes can't be allowed to take an entry in the "8+1" format?

Stew,

Thanks for your feedback, I totally agree and have now sorted that out, You can now put decimal numbers plus corrections in the CP,QA and BI fields in a diary entry. For example, these entries:

8, 8+1, 8.5, 8.5+1, 8.5+0.5

Are now allowed in the aforementioned fields.

If you have any more feedback then please don't hesitate to post here or get in touch.

Simon

Hi Simon

Thanks for all the hard work you are putting into this site - its great!

Is it possible that the BG diary could some how have the option to be viewed as a pie chart, as this is helpful to see a percentage of BG on target, under and over??

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Emma

Hi Emma,

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that this would be a nice feature to have. Unfortunately it's a little more difficult displaying things graphically on the web versus in table format, rest assured though I'll get working on it and update you on progress via this forum post.

Thanks,

Simon

An update on the pie charts - you can now access pie charts via links underneath your diary display in the BG diary function. There are two options currently; one which will display the chart for all of your results, and one which will display results for the currently displayed diary entries (chosen using the date pickers above the diary page).

This gives you a nice graphical representation of how you are doing in terms of BG targets.

Let me know what you think of this, and as always if you have any improvement requests.

Simon

Wow, its great, thanks Simon for being so quick!
Em

Update to the online BG diary charts - we now have trending charts available which show your BG Readings over time, as well as your average readings at different times of the day. Find the links to these underneath the display of your BG diary online.

If anyone has feedback/suggestions of other charts/BG Functions then post here and we'll get started on them ASAP.

Thanks,

Simon