MEDICMETRIC: A VISUALIZATION TOOL TO SUPPORT THE MANAGEMENT OF TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a preventable, long-lasting, and rarely completely cured chronic disease of the pancreas. Many diabetes cases are preventable through lifestyle change. There are a lack of visualization tools for understanding and tracking causal factors and habits, however, which lead to diabetes and impede recovery from it. Without visualization tools that provide immediate feedback and an understanding of the relationship between insulin intake, blood sugar levels (BGLs), exercise, food intake, heart disease, and blood pressure (BP), individuals living with DM are less likely to make good health decisions. The aim of this paper is to discuss the development of a visualization tool called MedicMetric. Fitbit and Dexcom APIs were used to capture health data for the visualization tool. Three new visualization techniques were used in MedicMetric, namely the Annotated Line View, the Radial Progress View and the Change Rate View. It was discovered that IV techniques can be applied to support the self-management of DM by helping to refine new IV designs, which reduce the effort required to retrieve and interpret useful data. IV techniques were used to create and evaluate a new set of visualizations, which were used in the prototype. The results of a usability study showed that the participants would prefer using such an IV tool to better manage their T2DM and personal goals. These results support the theory that IV techniques can be used to support the self-management of T2DM. The MedicMetric prototype was compared to the MySygr and Diabetes:M applications. MedicMetric and MySugr obtained almost identical results for effectiveness and efficiency. However, participants indicated that MedicMetric provided the best support overall, with 100 percent of participants stating that they would prefer to use MedicMetric in future.