For those living with diabetes, the pandemic has affected access to in-person healthcare. Patients have had to do remote consultations with their doctors and they have had to make sure they do personal monitoring of their condition. Wearable devices have played a huge part in that and now they will be getting another tool to help them with day-to-day tracking and management of their health. Fitbit users in the U.K will now be able to use the app to log their glucose levels.
Tracking users’ glucose levels through the Fitbit app may still be manual but at least it can help with the tracking and management. They will be able to manually log their levels as well as set personalized ranges so it will be easier to see if they’re already out of range and make adjustments and identify important changes that may have affected them. They can also set to receive reminders to log their glucose levels in case they regularly forget to do so.
Fitbit is also partnering with Diabetes UK for a multi-year campaign in raising awareness about diabetes and educating the public on behavior changes that they can adapt to lessen the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. For those who are already dealing with the disease, the campaign will help them understand their condition and manage it together with other aspects of overall health and wellbeing.
Google (who owns Fitbit in case you didn’t know it yet) emphasizes that this new Blood Glucose feature is not a replacement for actual medical advice. The purpose is to keep track of glucose levels and see it alongside other metrics that Fitbit devices can give you like physical activity, sleep, and logged nutrition. Users should still talk to their healthcare provider when it comes to blood glucose management.
The Blood Glucose feature will be available for Fitbit users in the U.K this November and is English only for now. It was also introduced to Fitbit Charge 5 users in India last week.
