Ideas for Log for Life

I am uploading a pdf version of the excel file that I use for logging my blood sugars. It was developed by Kevin (at parenthetic-diabetic.blogspot.com)-- he deserves all credit for it!! He would also be a good person to consult as someone who has thought through pattern management and probably could offer many ideas!

For my purposes, this is the most useful log that I have ever used. The design is great and I think that many would benefit for combining this set up with a quick way to enter numbers, either through email (as is possible with Log for Life) OR by uploading from their meter or pump.

What I like: it has averages AND standard deviations. The charts make it really easy to identify patterns!

Also, check out the pattern management group... there may be a lot of good people to give ideas on the Beta version there.

Tags: log, management, pattern

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Attachments:

Logbook-2008-07-14.pdf, 99 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by landileigh on August 22, 2008 at 11:00am

i would really like to be able to change the base low and high to what my doctor recommends

Permalink Reply by Joe Milam on August 23, 2008 at 7:20pm

Landileigh,

This is on our top list of to do's... we should have this done well before we go live so I will be sure to let you know so you can try it out!

Thank you..... oh, do you like the iPhone interface??

Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on August 24, 2008 at 9:29pm

I like the iphone interface, btw. :)

Permalink Reply by Joe Milam on September 18, 2008 at 5:14pm

Landileigh,

This feature is now live! Go into your settings and change your ranges. This will also affect your averages under analysis... let me know if that works for you!

Joe

Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on August 23, 2008 at 12:14am

I agree with Landileigh. I need to be able to adjust the low and high goals to set them where my personal targets are.

I'm also more interested in the line graph (or in my case, the spikey mountain range) below the primary chart than I am in the data points. I test 8-12 times a day right now and that makes for a very dotty points-in-time graph (see below) that is hard to flush out and make much sense of. If I could have more quantifiable data available on the graph below that plots the glucose line, I'd like that. Is there a reason it is non-numbered or that the dots on the upper graph are not plotted along a similar line?

Also, since it's trending software, I hate to ask this of you gentlemen developers, but some way to include notes about a woman's cycle would be a nice addition. Perhaps it'd be an unnecessary extra, but some women have higher numbers during pre-cycle days and lower numbers during as they're more sensitive to insulin during their cycle. There were some jailbroken iphone apps that were pretty good for this alone, but I'd love to see it logged as part of my diabetes life, too, especially to see if I have blood glucose trends associated with hormone surges and the like. I've yet to see a logging software make allowances for that - although I suppose it could just be included in notes. But if we're logging my life here...

Permalink Reply by Joe Milam on August 23, 2008 at 7:24pm

Melissa,

We hope to have the averages changed very soon as I told Landileigh. I am passing every suggestion to our programmers and will make sure I get feedback to you soon. Please do not hesitate to suggest... your cycle idea is something we had, of course, not considered until now. Thank you again for your interest and support!!

Joe

Permalink Reply by Joe Milam on September 18, 2008 at 5:17pm

Melissa,

The range changes are now live! Please go into your Log settings and change them to whatever your ranges are. This will also affect your analysis results... let me know what you think. We are shooting to have the tagging done (for tracking your cycles and other things that affect your numbers) by the time we launch our full version later this year.

Let me know if you like the range change feature!

Joe

Permalink Reply by Joe Milam on August 23, 2008 at 7:18pm

Kristin,

Thank you SO much for sharing your logbook with us. This is exactly the type of feedback that we need to make you the best possible product on the market. I will let you know next week what our programmers think about this type of pattern management being a part of LFL...

Again, thank you for your thoughts and support!

Joe

Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on August 24, 2008 at 11:48am

Okay, I've found some other things I have suggestions for.

First, the analysis screen.

I like the glucose, exercise, and weight summaries, but the carb and medication summaries need a lot of work. I am not interested in my average carb intake, highest carb intake, or lowest carb intake per meal (sometimes I might need to log that I ate two glucose tablets and sometimes it's 3 slices of pizza; having that data in my analysis won't alter my intake of carbs in the future). Same with insulin dosages. Not interested in average, highest, or lowest dosages. Nor are my doctors. My need for insulin is going to vary throughout the day. What I am interested in is my total daily dosage of insulin and my total daily intake of carbs and what that average is per day. What I need to know is that on average, maybe I'm taking in way too many or way too few carbs than my educator and I deemed to be my target goal. Same with insulin. My pump tells me that my average daily dosage is 40units per day. It then tells me how much of that goes toward meal bolusing (30%), correction bolusing (10%), and basal rates (60%). This is useful data and I can make changes to my dosing regimen from this data. I feel like LogforLife needs to tweak a bit to make these kinds of considerations for pumpers. I need to be able to log my basal rates throughout the day or have that pre-programmed from my account settings page. If I took an injection of a long-acting insulin, I could log it, but how would I log a basal rate that delivers tiny increments throughout the day every 3ish minutes?

Second, too many dots.

The other change that I don't think I articulated well is that I can't analyze the mess of dots on my screen. I feel that either I need to be able to change the graph's duration to see less than one week at a time, or there needs to be a plotted line (which I did say earlier, but it's not just because I want a line). Right now, I test almost 75 times per week (most pumpers test 6-8 times a day, which would be anywhere from 42-56 times per week). Have your developers seen what the screen looks like with more than 4x per day testing (or 28 plotted points, the typical shots-taker)? It's indiscernible when I'm looking at this many dots on my screen. All I can gather from the data is that most of my splotches are in range. I can't discern whether the highs happened before or after the lows when I have 10-12 points plotted in a given day. Each day is like 3cm wide and that makes a linear analysis of the data very difficult to see. If I could change the range of data, I might be able to spread those 10-12 dots out and see more clearly what's going on in a typical day for me. Joe, if you could log into my account, you'd see exactly what I mean. Or reference that screen shot I added in the other post.

Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on August 24, 2008 at 9:23pm

I wanted to post some of the reports I like from Abbott's CoPilot software... Attached here are the daily combination, weekly pump, and statistics reports. I think it's important that logforlife considers the needs of pumpers.

Attachments:

Permalink Reply by MelissaBL on August 24, 2008 at 9:24pm

Here also are glucose modal day and glucose line reports. I wanted to illustrate the difference between different amounts of data.

Attachments:

Permalink Reply by Dale on August 28, 2008 at 7:05pm

I really like the reports that the OneTouch software offers. I like the ease of entry to LogForLife via e-mail, but need the data to be more directly accessible. I would LOVE to be able to download this information into an Excel file that I could slice & dice depending on what I'm looking for.

I would also love to see a variety of different charts available to select for analysis and have them become full screen when I select them.

Finally, I think the iPhone version seems like a great idea, but as I e-mailed directly, I'm a Blackberry user. A Blackberry-specific (or smartphone generic) version would be a GODSEND for me. I am often away from my computer, but very rarely away from my phone.

Overall, I think it's a great service, and I've been very happy in the limited time I've been using it. I'm honestly very excited to see how this evolves as time goes on - right now it's already one of the best that I've seen, and it looks like you've got great plans for further improvement.

Keep up the good work!