UoB students create app to help treatment of diabetics

In their bid to ease the lives of diabetic patients and help them keep their blood sugar levels under control apart from managing meals and monitoring health statuses, two Bahraini University of Bahrain (UoB) students has launched an app that will help them maintain good health. The “icheck” app was created by Bahraini students Kawthar Ali and Muna Mohammed.

It gives diabetics readings, clear diagrams and graphs so that it is easy for them to give their therapists reports on their health, as well as allowing the doctors to remotely follow the status of their patients at any time. The students said the app has an insulin calculator through which the patient determines the type of dish that will be taken, where the app “icheck” allows the patient to determine the type of dish that will be consumed by choosing from the types of foods in the application such as local dishes, fast food and healthy foods.

“icheck” would then calculate the number of grammes of carbohydrates in each meal, and notifies the patient of the amount of insulin doses that must be taken before taking the dish. Ms Ali and Ms Mohammed explained that the app works as an alternative for the insulin pump, which costs patients around BD3,000 to purchase, and around BD2,000 annually for maintenance. The pump gives patients the required dose of insulin, after entering the numbers of carbohydrates in each meal they consume.

They commented that “icheck” does the same task, but requires the patients to take the dose on their own and not automatically, which the pump does.    

“We have created this app to facilitate the lives of diabetes patients and assist them in taking the necessary doses of insulin in time. “icheck” could also potentially help the Health Ministry with knowing the areas where patients are concentrated more than other areas and accordingly provide the necessary medications and awareness campaigns to cover their needs,” the students commented.

They added that they developed the app, which recently won the best graduation project award at UoB among other prizes, after consulting Internal Medicine and Endocrinology Specialist at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC) Dr Hussain Taha and Nutritionist at SMC Dana Abdulaziz, under the supervision of Amal Ghanem from UoB.