A new smartphone app can help avoid development of diabetes, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

An AI driven app helped people with prediabetes avoid development of diabetes as well as human-led coaching, a study by Johns Hopkins diabetes expert Nas Mathiodakis and colleagues has shown. 

Mathioudakis :The app was using built in inputs of the smartphone, so geolocation, accelerometer, you can tell where you are if you're moving. It was connected to a digital scale to check on weight and there was this built in photo based meal detection. If it gave a nudge that you're free right now, the weather's nice, you've got 30 minutes between now and your next meeting, why don't you take a walk to Starbucks and you actually did act on that, that's a win for the algorithm and it's like OK that type of nudge worked. But if it did give you that nudge and nothing happened well maybe that's not the right approach for you.  :34

Mathioudakis says the app was modeled on diabetes prevention programs developed by the CDC and shown to be effective, but not easy to access. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.