We launched TuAnalyze in May 2010 in partnership with Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, with the goal of empowering members of TuDiabetes (and EsTuDiabetes) to track, share and compare their health information for research advancing diabetes care and public health response.
In the Fall of 2010, we launched a survey module as part of the application and in December, a Spanish version was launched on EsTuDiabetes (our sister community in Spanish) under the name EsTuAnalisis. Today, I have more news about TuAnalyze and quite a few valuable lessons learned from the project to share with you.
Recent Improvements
If you go to the TuAnalyze map, you may notice a few changes:
If you are not logged in or haven't set up an account with TuAnalyze, you will notice the map is now bigger... and (you noticed in the screenshot below!!) there are new countries that have lit up! As of this writing, Argentina has lit up. If you are logged in and have set up an account with TuAnalyze, you need to zoom out by clicking on the "-" sign on the top left (below the "Map" heading), to see the full map.
After the US, Canada and Mexico (the 3 countries for which we are lighting up regions on a state by state/province by province basis), and given the distribution of our membership around the world, we found it made sense to start lighting up the map on a country basis.
If you click on a region (state, province or country) for which at least some people have entered and shared their A1c data, you will notice a little pop-up appear that shows how many more people need to share their data for the region to light up. For example, as you can see below, as of today the UK needs 7 more people has already lit up on the map too! Yet Australia needs 13 people to enter their A1c so it can light up!
To preserve anonymity, regions continue to be lit up only once a certain number of participants have signed up and shared their A1c data. But you will notice, the legend on the map shows as grayed out the regions for which we have people participating: this includes people from 43 countries!
We want to make sure that the data we have in TuAnalyze is as close as possible to a fresh representation of our community. We encourage you to enter and update your A1c's (you can enter as many A1c values as you want) and tell your friends about TuAnalyze, by clicking on the little "Share" icon directly above the TuAnalyze map. With YOUR help, we can light up the entire world map with our A1c averages!
Things TuAnalyze has taught us
To explain some of the key things that TuAnalyze has shown us so far, we put together a video just under 3 minutes long, with excerpts from a longer interview with Elissa R. Weitzman, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School | Children's Hospital Boston and one of the key people that works with us in this amazing project:
If you want to listen to the full 12-minute long interview and read through the complete slides, click on the SlideShare below.
Summary
In short, we're learning A LOT about TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes from the data we're gathering through TuAnalyze. But to paint a comprehensive picture of the communities we need you to:
Enter your A1c and take the TuAnalyze survey, if you haven't. Some people have signed up for the application but haven't entered any A1c numbers. It is as easy as 1-2-3:
If you have already signed up for TuAnalyze, please enter any new A1c values you may have since the last time you visited. You know how little it takes... and you know how much it helps!
For now, that's all! Thanks for your continued support and let's keep rocking!
Thanks Manny! I love the map. It reminds me of “Casablanca” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, when the planes fly around the world w/ the Nazi fighters. Great stuff!
I have to admit it does bear somewhat of a Raiders of the Lost Ark resemblance!
So you’ve entered all A1cs?
Scott,
It would be amazing if you entered your history that you have on your site, if it’s not too much of a pain: http://scottsdiabetes.com/scotts-a1cs/
I’ve only entered the one I had prior to signing up. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the exact dates of the tests prior to the last one although I had a string of 5.8s since I’d gotten my pump in April 08. Before that I think I had 7.2 and 7.7 which I remember was up from where I’d been before that but was sort of explainable (cf. ‘Diabiography’ on my page…). I’m back to the doc in February though so I’ll put that in there. I sort of figured that since it is a science experiement, I didn’t want to just guesstimate dates. I’m sure there are records somewhere but I don’t keep them. Blood under the bridge, as it were?
Very Cool! I’ll have to see if I can find any older readings. I’m kinda new-ish to all of this, so I don’t think I have any of the Information unfortunately.
I’ve been thinking about this. A1C have been around for awhile and BG testing has been around for a while. I think the key question isn’t necesarily a ‘goal’ for either one of them but using them to communicate with each other, so the short term testing that leads to decent long term results can be targeted and taught. There’s lots of threads about ‘endorks’ and frustration with the medical community but I think that it may sort of be on us to tell them what to tell us so that those of us who are struggling for one of the millions of reasons that we struggle can find solutions? I’ve read a few books (Dr. B. TLAP, Pumping Insulin and one of Sherri Colberg’s books…) and, while they are all interesting, I feel like there’s a solution out there that could be ‘codified’ more readily than it is but people are all sort of on their own page and working with their own limited medical/ insurance resources which seems to be a chore in itself.
I think the A1C project is great but I think the next level would involve synthesizing A1C data and BG logs. Which is a miserable task in my opinion. I hate logs.
I hope yoou realize that this noble effort at communication is really statistically insignificant? When the sample is so small, one very good or very poor reading will really skew the results. Is there published lab data that might better represent the population? The data is further skewed by the fact tjhat individuals can choose to report or not report. Many may be reluctant to report poor results and very willing to report success. I find it hard to believe that the averages are as good as you show.
We are aware that even if the entire community were to report their numbers, it would not be representative of the entire diabetes community, only of the TuDiabetes members which, by definition are a self-selected group: people who choose to join a social network (can afford to do so, etc.) and participate on it.
I also wonder if lab ranges vary – I have heard from people that had their A1c measured at different labs and got quite different results (around 0.5 difference). I was told that A1c’s should not be compared across labs…
I do not think this is necessary. A new wordwide standard for the A1c is on its way. In Germany this new figure is called A1c (mmol/mol). Starting this year Germany and the UK will show both the old and the new A1c on lab results. The International Federation of Clinical Chemistry (IFCC) has developed this standard to make the numbers more comparable from country to country and from lab to lab. http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/50/1/166
The TuAnalyze Team should prepare for that. They need to offer two input fields: Ac1 (%) and A1c (mmol/mol). I think the A1c (mmol/mol) can be converted to A1c (%) so both numbers can be shown in the same graph.
