Taking the red pill or forgetting to!

As mentioned in the last blog entry on the Imagine Cup software design competition in the UK this is the first of a series of posts about the challenges which ordinary people face in leading healthy lives and the challenges which face the healthcare industry in helping us lead healthier lives.

After sitting down with the two knowledgeable doctors (https://blogs.msdn.com/ukstudentzine/archive/2005/11/22/495857.aspx) to brainstorm it became obvious that the best ideas for the Imagine Cup 2006 competition aren't those which require lots of electronic gadgets connected to people with super computers working out whether you eat too many burgers. The best ideas are those which help people without being obstructive or intrusive to their daily lives.

Take an increasingly common condition like Diabetes -https://www.bbc.co.uk/health/healthy_living/nutrition/dietary_diabetes.shtml which affects 1.8 million known sufferers (and 1 million who don't even know they have it!!) in the UK. Whether Type 1 or Type 2 the person with the condition has to take active steps to maintain a healthy lifestyle balancing their nutrition, fitness and sugar in-take. Many of the 1.8 million people with the condition are young people (especially school age) who not only have to monitor their lifestyles but in some cases carry out regular blood sugar checks or self-administered injections of insulin. Now here's the interesting part....after speaking with the medical people it seems that problems arise with young patients when they choose to ignore the guidance of their local GP or worse they don't want to be seen to have Diabetes as their peers may look down on them. Doctors find it really difficult to help young people as the processes and guidance for monitoring their lifestyles are typically manual and require effort and what doctors really want is to automate and regulate without the young person having to sacrifice their social or school life!

This can be applied in any case where a young person is too embarrassed or is unwilling to take their drugs or check their health near young people. The question I have for the SDC teams out there is how can technology fix this? How can technology keep a young diabetes sufferer healthy and checking their insulin levels without interrupting their daily lives?

Mark