Development of Cell Phone Application for Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring Based on ISO/IEEE 11073 and HL7 CCD

The objectives of this research were to develop and evaluate a cell phone application based on the standard protocol for personal health devices and the standard information model for personal health records to support effective blood glucose management and standardized service for patients with diabetes.

An application was developed for Android 4.0.3. In addition, an IEEE 11073 Manager, Medical Device Encoding Rule, and Bluetooth Health Device Profile Connector were developed for standardized health communication with a glucometer, and a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) Composer and CCD Parser were developed for CCD document exchange. The developed application was evaluated by five healthcare professionals and 87 users through a questionnaire comprising the following variables: usage intention, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition, perceived risk, and voluntariness.

As a result of the evaluation of usability, it was confirmed that the developed application is useful for blood glucose self-monitoring by diabetic patients. In particular, the healthcare professionals stated their own views that the application is useful to observe the trends in blood glucose change through the automatic function which records a blood glucose level measured using Bluetooth function, and the function which checks accumulated records of blood glucose levels. Also, a result of the evaluation of usage intention was 3.52 ± 0.42 out of 5 points.

The application developed by our research team was confirmed by the verification of healthcare professionals that accurate feedback can be provided to healthcare professionals during the management of diabetic patients or education for glucose management.