A sports and health application for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus -An end-user survey on expectations and requirements

Purpose The aim of this survey is to investigate T1DM patients' expectations for and requirements of an ideal mobile self-management app with a special focus on functions for sports and exercise. Methods A total of 251 persons participated in the survey. After checking for completeness and plausibility, the answers of 167 patients diagnosed with T1DM (66% female, 34% male) were analyzed. Results The key features/aspects that were identified as being rather important/very important by more than 75% of respondents are: data security (96.4%), integration of further health data (e.g., heart rate, step count, calories) from other apps already installed on their smartphone (92.2%), automatic import of glucose data from other apps (91.6%), individual target setting (87.4%), warnings about abnormal glucose levels (82.6%), warnings about other abnormal health data (81.4%), diary function (80.8%), information on the training session after the workout (80.8%) and displaying/processing of further fitness variables (such as heart rate, step count, etc.) from other health-related wearable systems (77.8%). Conclusions This study identifies the most relevant features of an ideal self-management app with functions for sports and exercise targeted at patients with T1DM that should be considered in the development of such an app.

Automated summary

This study identified the key features desired by patients with T1DM for an ideal self-management app with functions for sports and exercise, including data security, integration of health data, individual target setting, abnormal warnings, and diary function.