Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction

Mobile health technology has been highly beneficial for people with diabetes, offering a plethora of educational patterns especially during COVID-19 pandemic. Diabetes self-management education through telehealth technologies is important in promoting health practices and in reducing the risk of complications. Nevertheless, the challenge is to elaborate a digital application in light of sociocultural background and economic status.

Material and methods

We imagined and developed a new smartphone application named : ’Ana wa Soukari’ in simplified Arabic, using mapped sections with pictured characters, and providing individualized blood glucose prescription chart helping the patient manage rapid insulin doses. The purpose of our study is to evaluate the clinical and biological effectiveness of the second Moroccan mobile application ’Ana wa Soukari’ on type 1 diabetes mellitus self-management.

Results

Here we present our preliminary results. A total of 9 patients initially received the application ’Ana wa soukari’ on their smartphones. The mean age of our patients was 12.7 years (6–20). 33% of them were male and 66% were female. The patients were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for a mean of 3.39 years. Only one patient had diabetes for more than 5 years. 55% of the patients were initially admitted in our endocrinology diabetology department for poor glycaemic control, and 45% were admitted for a newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus. All of them had initially received therapeutic education in its usual form. None of them had a degenerative complication of diabetes. The mean HbA1c level was 8.51% (6.4%–12.4%). The mean number of hypoglycaemic events before the application was used dropped from 4.3 events per week to 2.1 per week after one week using the application.The patients thought the content was suitable for the young diabetic patients and understandable, and found that the application was perfectly complementary to therapeutic education in its classic form besides giving them the possibility of adapting their insulin doses according to each meal and physical activity.

Conclusion

Our preliminary results bring out the need for a longer study to explore the efficacy of ’Ana wa Soukari’ to optimize outcomes in young people with type 1 diabetes mellitus and give a greater opportunity for computer-aided diabetes education to play a significant role in Diabetes self-management.