A sports and health application for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus -An end-user survey on expectations and requirements

Purpose: The aim of this survey is to investigate T1DM patients’ expectations for and requirements of an ideal mobile self-management app with a special focus on functions for sports and exercise. Methods: A total of 251 persons participated in the survey. After checking for completeness and plausibility, the answers of 167 patients diagnosed with T1DM (66% female, 34% male) were analyzed. Results: The key features/aspects that were identified as being “rather important”/”very important” by more than 75% of respondents are: data security (96.4%), integration of further health data (e.g., heart rate, step count, calories) from other apps already installed on their smartphone (92.2%), automatic import of glucose data from other apps (91.6%), individual target setting (87.4%), warnings about abnormal glucose levels (82.6%), warnings about other abnormal health data (81.4%), diary function (80.8%), information on the training session after the workout (80.8%) and displaying/processing of further fitness variables (such as heart rate, step count, etc.) from other health-related wearable systems (77.8%). Conclusions: This study identifies the most relevant features of an ideal self-management app with functions for sports and exercise targeted at patients with T1DM that should be considered in the development of such an app.