Applying System Thinking to a Diabetes Mobile Application Project

This project explores the development and implementation of a mobile application designed to aid adults aged 40-65 with type 2 diabetes in managing their condition. The application aims to enhance diabetes management by tracking glucose levels, BMI, and dietary habits. The project employs system thinking principles to create a comprehensive plan involving various stakeholders, including patients, doctors, dieticians, and software developers. The application will provide personalized feedback, reminders for check-ups, and 24/7 support. Data analysis will be conducted to assess the impact of the application on blood glucose levels and HbA1c over a three-month period. The project emphasizes the importance of proactive patient engagement and multidisciplinary assistance in achieving effective diabetes management. The system diagram illustrates inputs like patient data and feedback, throughputs like analysis and review, and outputs like improved health metrics, demonstrating a cyclical approach to continuous improvement and patient care. The project also references related research on the usability and efficacy of diabetes mobile applications.

Running head: Diabetes and application
Diabetes and application
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Mobile-based applications are some of the most effective and popular choices to reduce
or control any particular health conditions. The prevalence of usage of mobile-based applications
in maintaining weight and tracking rate of physical activities is quite high nowadays. This
assignment will understand the importance of mobile application in maintaining body glucose
levels with the maintenance of the diet. This study will critically analyze a plan which is made to
track the health condition of a chosen population (adults aged 40-65 with type 2 Diabetes). This
study will design an effective plan with the help of system thinking and will describe how the
plan can act as an effective intervention to the chosen population. System thinking is stated to be
a management disciple that is concerned with the understanding of the system. This can be done
by examining the association and interactions between the elements that comprise the defined
system. The principles of system thinking that can be applied in this particular case are
wholeness, interaction, multidimensionality, openness, purposefulness and openness.
The mobile application program will involve the patient of diabetes aged between 40-65
years. The stakeholders for this application are patients, sponsors, software developers, web
designers, doctors, dieticians, diabetologists, laboratory experts or pathologists, physical
therapists and data analysts. Data will be collected from the patients and will be stored in the
application weekly basis. At first, patients will be segregated as per their nutritional habits in
ADA diet follower and weight-based ADA diet followers. Then glucose level will be measured
by the glucose monitoring checker or a lancing device that can be connected to mobile by
Bluetooth network (Fu, McMahon, Gross, Adam & Wyman, 2017). The kit will be synced with
the mobile application to store the data. The tool kit will consist of a fat analyzer BMI calculator,
which will also be connected to mobile with the help of Bluetooth. As per the BMI and glucose
level, 9 combinations (such as a person with hyperglycemia and overweight, hypoglycemia and
overweight, normal glucose level and overweight and other combinations) (see the map) can be
found. The application would be designed in such a way so that feedbacks will be forwarded to
the patient (Desveaux et al., 2016). After every week, the allocation will show a progress report
on the basis of the daily BMI and Glucose level. After every 2 weeks, application will remind
the patient to visit the doctor for a checkup (Gunawardena et al., 2019). Special subscribers can
get the opportunity to connect to doctors by video calling. The application will have a 24X7-chat
support for the patients. The first two weeks of the checkup will be free of cost. The automated
feedbacks should be designed with the assistance of health experts. After three months of this
program , data will be analysed by the data analysts and the result will show how Glucose
level or the HbA1c will be changed on the basis of diet and medical assistance. The patient can
take help from technical support to get accurate data.
The application is very effective, as this will not much time-consuming and cost effective
also. The patient can have multidisciplinary assistance to solve health issues. However, the
effectiveness is very much dependent on the proactiveness of the patient.

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Inputs from various healthcare
professionals
Analysis by physicians and lab personnel
Diet
BMI
Glucose level
Throughput of the analysis and reviewing of
different risk factors
Nurses, dietician, and physical therapists give
feedbacks
Output obtained
Displayed to the patients through the
mobile applications
Analysis of data using calculations
After 1 month
RESULT
OUTPUT After 3 months
Probable Feedback

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References
Desveaux, L., Agarwal, P., Shaw, J., Hensel, J. M., Mukerji, G., Onabajo, N., ... & Mamdani, M.
(2016). A randomized wait-list control trial to evaluate the impact of a mobile application
to improve self-management of individuals with type 2 diabetes: a study protocol. BMC
medical informatics and decision making, 16(1), 144.DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-016-0381-5
Fu, H., McMahon, S. K., Gross, C. R., Adam, T. J., & Wyman, J. F. (2017). Usability and
clinical efficacy of diabetes mobile applications for adults with type 2 diabetes: a
systematic review. Diabetes research and clinical practice, 131, 70-81.DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diabres.2017.06.016
Gunawardena, K. C., Jackson, R., Robinett, I., Dhaniska, L., Jayamanne, S., Kalpani, S., &
Muthukuda, D. (2019). The influence of the smart glucose manager mobile application
on diabetes management. Journal of diabetes science and technology, 13(1), 75-81. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1177/193229681880