I’m traveling to Vietnam later this year and plan to leave my Insulin Pump at home. I’ve already spoken to Medtronic MiniMed about this planned trip, and my concerns about wearing the pump while going through airport screening within Vietnam. Even though I will be traveling with people who speak Vietnamese I am concerned about being allowed to bypass electronic screening machines at airports in Vietnam. Unfortunately we will be traveling by air a few times while in Vietnam. I want to protect my pump and that’s why I’m planning to go back to my early days of diabetes management and manually calculate my basil and bolus injections.
I’m fairly capable at Excel and have started to make a spreadsheet to log BG and insulin injections, but its getting very complicated. Basically, I’m looking to recreate the computer in my pump in Excel. What I wanted to ask this forum is if anyone is aware of an Apple App that comes close to the functionality of my pump in terms of calculating corrective and carb boluses. Thanks in advance for any feedback that can be provided. I’ve already spent some time looking at Apps and the internet and have yet to come across the functionality I’m looking for.
I don’t have an app recommendation for correction and meal boluses. If it were me, I would seriously consider simply returning to the low-tech basics. You can use an insulin to carb ratio (I:C) combined with carb counting to calculate meal boluses. For corrections, you simply need your insulin sensitivity factor or ISF. That is the amount of blood glucose drop you expect with one unit of insulin.
Then you only need two more things. The first is a rough calculation of insulin on board (IOB). That is the insulin boluses previously delivered, whether for meals or corrections, that is yet to act. The final piece of data needed is your duration of insulin action (DIA). I use five hours. This calculation is not as precise as a computer calculated integration function but I think it works fairly well.
For example, if you delivered a bolus of five units two hours ago, you could calculate that two units have already acted and three remain “on board,” based on a five hour DIA.
I love gadgets as much as the next person but this fundamental skill set needs no batteries, will not be lost, and takes up no space. This is also good practice for an unexpected loss of the electronic tools we’ve come to depend upon.
Thx Terry for your feedback. Absorption rates and latency are part of what I’m considering in this project. It’s been over 15 years since I’ve manually calculated insulin mgt and my problems with hypoglycemia at the the time was the primary reason for going to pump therapy. I guess I’m basically afraid of a purely manual approach to managing this while traveling. Anyway, that’s my issue to deal with. Thx again for your feedback.
Hello Gerhart,
Have you tried “Diabetes:M”? It is purely Android and has no data imput other than an Android device. That could be a big cons if you cannot depend on your cellphone or tablet. What I’ve found useful is that it backups data to Google Drive, you can export you data to csv, and xls, and also you can import from csv, and xls with some modeling on the worksheet. I got improvements on my calculations after started usign this app.
Hope it work for you.
Bests,
JP
I have had good success using both RapidCalc and PredictBGL, both available in Apple versions. I used a pump for many years (maybe 10, or 12?) but have happily reverted to injections and have as good of control using either of these apps as I did with a pump (and honestly, probably better but thats because I’ve changed some of my behavior and not because the apps are wildly magical). RapidCalc does an easy, straightforward job and allows for different rates and ratios needed during different times of day, its pretty easy to get set up and running and uses minimal battery power. PredictBGL is a few layers fancier and has a free version which does everything and more than a regular pump bolus wizard will do, plus a few extras, and also syncs to the web (more battery drain!) so if you have internet access via any device (someone else’s phone, a laptop, tablet, public use PC at an internet cafe) you can log in and get dosing info off it (which I find to be crazy helpful about twice a year but most of the time don’t care about). It is a little harder to get set up correctly, there’s more inputs and I don’t think the app menu is quite as smooth as the web version, but it comes with the added courtesy of suggesting new rates/ratios when you aren’t landing back in target which I find to be a useful feature for long-term use at least. I have used both extensively in regular life and out-of-the-ordinary situations and found them both to be really handy while also doing a wildly better job at calculating doses and tracking IOB than I can replicate either on paper or with a spreadsheet.
[PredictBGL and ManageBGL are the same, I think there’s older versions with one name vs the other, but they are the same program/app.]
