Diabetes affects 23 million Americans and additional 7 million of prediabetic patients. Medical health mobile apps has generated 3.2 billion downloads in 2016. Are apps helpful to our diabetic patients seeking food information?

Purpose: Do free diabetic food apps follow the Diabetes Self-management Education and Support (DSME) guidelines?

Methods: Using the search term, “diabetic foods,” we used Google search engine to identify 30 most commonly listed apps by bloggers, websites and web journalists. Then, accessing Google Playstore, we found the 10 most popular diabetic food apps in 2017 based on number of downloads. Inclusion criteria: 1000 downloads or more; ease of web accessibility during multiple downloads over 3 days (no malfunction, no malware). Exclusion criteria: apps which were purely informational. We downloaded the apps and evaluated their adherence to the DSME guidelines.

Results: The most popular diabetic food app is” Fooducate “with 1,000,000 downloads. Fooducate fulfills 8/10 categories, but 3 of them (Hb1AC, TG levels, and BMI) are paid features. Of the 10 food apps, only 3/10 have cal/carb counting feature.

Conclusions: Mobile apps for diabetic foods are still in its preliminary stages of development. More input by interested diabetes health care professionals will improve the quality of future mobile apps for diabetes education and management.
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Disclosure

G. Wu: None. L. Billard: None. E. Muro: None. A. Doan: None. V. Ngo: None.

© 2018 by the American Diabetes Association.
2018
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