Blood Glucose Predictions
What is it ?
New in version 2020.10, premium users can now use the “Blood Glucose Predictions” feature.
This goal of this feature is to give you a heads-up when you enter an insulin intake in you log and warn you if the app thinks that you may end up being in hypo or hyper.
As you can see in the image below, the “thumb up” image was added when the data in the dinner square was entered. It means the app thinks you should be ok comes bed time.
But how does it work ?
It all started when a few months ago we added a new setting asking our users to voluntarily share their data with us. Thanks to those generous users we were able to gather enough data to train a machine learning model to determine your next glycemia value based on all the information at our disposal.
To determine this value, it will be fed with your blood glucose values, your activity data, your insulin and carbs intakes and reply with a prediction of either “hypo”, “hyper”, “normal” or “I don’t know”.
How can it don’t know ? It’s because 1. nothing is ever perfect and 2. because it’s still early and we still need a lot more data for this (and for future other features). So please, if you haven’t done it yet, consider turning that “Sharing data” setting on. Thanks.
Is it safe to trust ?
That’s the important question. First, to get it out of the way, always follow your doctor recommandations. His experience and competencies are way above anything this statistical model can ever offer.
We have also included a few security mechanisms with this feature.
It will not start giving you predictions before it has collected what it feels like is enough data.
It will not give you predictions ever if its success rate on your data is not high enough. We’ve added a new section in the settings to show you the current status of the prediction engine. In this example, it will not provide predictions because its accuracy on your data is too low.
This is a bad accuracy rate …
That being said, even when it runs it can still be wrong. Sometimes because it is flat out wrong, sometimes because today, for example, your activity or your carbs do not follow their usual pattern. So think about it more as an additional signal than anything else.
We want to ear from you
This is probably the most important point. We really hope this feature will help you make better and easier decisions for your diabetes management but it is not done. It will never be. What we need to take it to the next level is your feedback to make it work in more cases, for more people. So please get in touch to tell us what you think either with the contact form on this site, in the app with the support link or via our Twitter account @diabetoapp.