International Journal of Education and Development using ICT

International Journal of Education and Development using ICT > Vol. 5, No. 4 (2009)

myDR: Improving the self-care process for Caribbean patients with Type II Diabetes through Mobile Learning

Salys Sarah Sultan, The University of The West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago
Permanand Mohan, The University of The West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago

Abstract
Diabetes self-management education plays a vital role in the treatment of people living with diabetes. The paper describes some of the practices in diabetes education delivery in the Caribbean region and some of the challenges currently faced. It focuses on a new channel for the delivery of personalized diabetes education for diabetic patients– the mobile phone. It discusses how mobile learning can be used to improve the self-care practices of patients with diabetes. It presents a mobile application called myDR (short for my daily record) that is used to retrieve and store the blood sugar and blood pressure levels of a diabetic patient. The system is designed to utilize the patient’s current and previous readings along with the patient’s health context to deliver diabetes self-management education using the mobile phone. The results of a usability study on the application are also presented; these indicate that the majority of the participants found this system to be an improvement of their current diabetes education programme. Furthermore, they valued the need for more relevant and timely information which is afforded by this new medium.

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