Earlier in the year at the Diabetes bloggers summit, my friend Gina gave me a preview of The Diabetes Resource. Even though this was waay back in July and long before the official launch, I was impressed by the design of the site itself and the sheer amount of really useful information that's in there.
Gina, is responsible for the DiabetesTalkFest site and the CGM Anti-Denial Campaign site and has been online for many years. She really understands the kinds of diabetes information that people are looking for and she and her team have done an awesome job at providing a great resource that's easy to use and well organized.
For example, The Diabetes Resource currently lists 41 web sites that provide diabetes accessories, most of which I didn't even know about. The events page on The Diabetes Resource gives you all the information about upcoming events, and makes it easy for you to add information about your event. There's also a chat room at The Diabetes Resource, so you have extra chances to connect with others who are living with diabetes.
I know, from maintaining the diabetes search engine, that the number of sites focusing on diabetes is constantly expanding. Many of these are useful and informative, but there are also a lot of sites with misleading information and spam. It takes a lot of effort to separate these sites from one another, luckily The Diabetes Resource has a great team that knows all about life with diabetes, so it can be depended on to keep this well maintained.
Dr. Faustman, whose lab is doing research into a possible cure for type 1 diabetes, has a new web site.
The new site design includes information about the current phase 1 clinical trials for the diabetes cure. The support section provides information about organizing an event to support the research work. And the news section lets you read all of the newsletters produced by the lab.
Dr. Faustman plans to start phase II trials later this year. To support this work we need to raise $25 million. You can now donate directly to this work from another part of the support section of the site.
The new layout makes it much easier to read all the current information about Dr. Faustman's research. Now all we have to do is wait for more news about the progress!
I recently came across MyCareTeam, a web-based diabetes management product. Based on the quicktour screenshots that they've posted online it certainly seems like an interesting product.
And as of today it's available from the American Diabetes Association for $12.99 per month, or $9.99 if you purchase a one-year subscription ($119.98). With the one-year subscription they'll also provide a free data cable for the meters that they support. Or you can buy the cable for $40. Based on the screenshot below, that's quite a long list of meters.
It certainly seems as if this product has some useful features. Here's another screenshot from the quick tour that shows the log screen from MyCareTeam.
As you can see, all my information about MyCareTeam is based on screenshots from their Quick Tour. That's one of the things that bothers me about this software. Why would I spend at least $12.99 to try it out and decide how useful it is?
For me, it makes more sense to have a 30-day free trial (with the option to purchase the download cable) and then see whether it's actually worth $100+ a year to me. After all there are already many free web-based diabetes tracking systems (Sugarstats.com, SweetSpot.dm, and others). And these are both useable and useful.
I see the benefit to both the ADA and MyCareTeam to charge for the product. It'll allow them to enhance the product and raise some funds for ADA. But I also understand web software a lot and I think that you need to let people try this software out first, before they'll commit to spending money to use it.
Do let me know what you think about this model. Have any of you used MyCareTeam? Did it seem like good value to you? Do you have any privacy concerns about using this or other web-based tracking software?
Today is the second day of Mix07. There's a lot more people, and much more buzz than yesterday.
Twitter is being used to send updates out to folks, and enable impromptu sessions and meeting among folks.
As a result of twitter I got a chance to meet with Scott Hanselman and talk with him some about CGM devices and the challenges of handling different data formats from these data collection devices. And Scott did a great job summarizing the announcements from day one of Mix.
Mix07 seems to be much more around rich media and media delivery to you via desktop apps, web browsers, or mobile devices. For those of us who are building enterprise applications, the rich media stuff is not immediately of interest. But we're also seeing a lot more tools around developing UIs for Silverlight. And once you're on that platform - the world is yours (or so Microsoft would have you believe).
At lunch I was chatting with the Microsoft Program Manager responsible for the MSDN user interface. She showed me how they've used Starlight to add videos to the front page, and how they've improved the search experience. Nice job, and it sounds as if more is coming soon to MSDN.
My biggest complaint so far? Too many interesting sessions on at the same time: I guess that's a good complaint. Having the videos on the Mix07 site will help, but it's not really the same. And as of right now (late on Tuesday) very few of the videos are actually there.
Tomorrow I'm looking forward to a session on Amazon Web Services and much more on Silverlight.
I was reading a post today on Jon Udell's blog and noticed a really interesting facility that displayed a preview when you hovered the mouse over a hyperlink.
The Diabetes Technology Blog is focused on using technology to live life to the full with diabetes. I review new diabetes technology including: blood glucose monitors; continuous glucose monitors; blood sugar meters; diabetes software and living with diabetes.
About Me
Name: Bernard Farrell
Location: Massachusetts, United States
I was born in Ireland and now live in the US.
I have had Type 1 diabetes for over 36 years. I struggle with my blood sugar, the same as most people with diabetes.
I wear a Cozmo 1800 insulin pump and a Dexcom SEVEN Plus CGM to track my blood glucose levels.
I'm blessed by God, and every day brings the possibility of a cure.
