DialBetics

Self-management is the key to diabetes therapy.1 Information communication technology—including smartphone applications—is recognized as a promising means of allowing timely intervention to support self-management by diabetes patients.2 We developed a real-time automated interactive system—DialBetics—to help patients achieve that self-management.3 A randomized control trial for 54 type 2 diabetes patients who were not on insulin injections showed that hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) of the group using DialBetics improved significantly after 3 months: from 7.1 ± 1.0% to 6.7 ± 0.7% versus the control group’s 7.0 ± 0.9% to 7.1 ± 1.1% (P = .019).4 A pilot study was then conducted to assess the safety and usability for type 2 diabetes patients on insulin injections.