1. GlucoSync Development Glucose Meter Data Upload Rebecca Busch, Adam Langdon, Casey Leichty, Zac Orr, Kristin Stechschulte Dr. John Estell, Dr. David Kisor The Application Conclusion Project GlucoSyncTesting Strategies Dr. David Kisor of the Ohio Northern University College of Pharmacy has supported the development of www.ecivon.info, a website that allows for information sharing between patients and health care providers. People with diabetes who currently use www.ecivon.info to track their glucose levels do so by typing their meter readings into forms manually, a process that is both time consuming and prone to error. Seeing the potential for improvement, Dr. Kisor approached the College of Engineering with the goal of enlisting computer science students to automate this process. Having been presented with this task, the GlucoSync design team has formulated a software solution that will upload readings from multiple glucose meters to www.ecivon.info. Automating the data entry process will serve as a timesaver while eliminating the possibility of errors when keying in data. An added expectation of the GlucoSync team is the promotion of consistent blood glucose level self-monitoring GlucoSync is a ground-breaking software tool providing diabetes patients with a simple and powerful method of monitoring blood glucose levels. In conjunction with www.ecivon.info, glucose levels can be retrieved from a patients meter and uploaded to the health education website with a few clicks of the mouse. From there, a patient's health care provider can access and monitor these glucose levels as soon as they become available on the website. The next step in self-monitoring of diabetes, GlucoSync provides many exciting features: Accurate and reliable data transfer, eliminating the mistakes of manual entry A fresh, user-friendly interface, allowing for the clear interpretation of readings The ability to retrieve and view readings at one’s convenience, without a constant Internet connection Upload multiple readings at once to www.ecivon.info Support for the following leading glucose meters: Ascensia™ DEX®2 from Bayer Ascensia ELITE™ XL from Bayer OneTouch® Ultra® from LifeScan Freestyle™ from TheraSense Acknowledgements Dr. David Kisor, founder of RxLearn, inc. Brian Gulbis, administrator of www.ecivon.info Therasense and Lifescan, for encouraging third-party development with their meters Project GlucoSync exhibits many exciting and unique features, including: The corporate sponsorship of RxLearn, Inc. Cross-college cooperation of the College of Pharmacy and the College of Engineering Pending trademark for the GlucoSync logo One of the first products to provide health care providers with instant web-based access to their patients’ glucose meter readings Utilization of the emerging Microsoft.Net technology To insure compatibility with the existing ecivon infrastructure and optimize the convenience to the user and safety of the user’s data, GlucoSync was developed as a stand-alone application using Visual Studio.Net. The development relied on the following: C# for the main application code and user interface Visual Basic 6.0 for the serial communication and dial-up networking controls XML for glucose data storage and parsing Symmetric data encryption to preserve the privacy of the user A reusable abstract meter class for the quick addition of new meter functionality Embedded web browser for server communications JavaScript and PHP to upload readings to the ecivon database GlucoSync was tested using each of the four supported meters. These meters, as well as the blood glucose values stored in them were provided by Dr. Kisor. Each meter contained 10 to 32 glucose values. A test server which mirrors the live ecivon web server was setup to test upload functionality. Upon completion of development, the upload functionality was added to the live ecivon server and tested. The completed application was tested by the developers, Dr. Kisor, and finally by a selected group of Pharmacy students. Currently serving approximately 2,000 registered users, with over 4,000 visitors per month, ecivon will serve as the distribution point for GlucoSync. All ecivon members will be able to download GlucoSync from the ecivon website free of charge. Already compatible with four of the leading glucose meters on the market, GlucoSync’s design makes adding more meters simple and efficient and insures its relevance well into the future. Ultimately, this application successfully provides a safe and simple solution to the more error-prone method of manual data entry to ecivon. Furthermore, GlucoSync, in conjunction with ecivon, helps to promote the self-monitoring of diabetes and fulfill the primary goal of ecivon, “to make one experienced”. GlucoSync met it’s functional requirements in all tests, including the following conditions: A current ecivon user uploading a single value or multiple values at once to their account An unauthorized ecivon user attempting to upload glucose values An error occurs while submitting data via HTTP or inserting data into the ecivon database. A user’s ecivon password is changed but the GlucoSync password remains unchanged The tests were completed successfully on machines running Windows 98, 2000, and XP, using dial-up and broadband connections, with resolutions from 800x600 and higher, and font sizes of 96 dpi and higher. GlucoSync Data Flow