I'm hoping to get a new meter soon from AgaMatrix. Their product differentiation (apart from a fairly nice looking design) is the accuracy of the results.

I plan to use it for a week or so, while also using my OneTouch and Dexcom. I'm really using it so I can look at their Zero-Click software and review it for my blog.

I have a plan. Can I share it with you?

Hands up how many of you have more than one device for your diabetes management that gathers data? How many of you (like me) have at least three?

OK. Now have you got a single piece of software that allows you to get the data from all your device and let you see it together in one view?

Just as I thought. Quite a few hands for the first two questions and no hands for the last one.

Have you ever thought through why this isn't possible? It's all about data formats.

There is no industry wide agreed upon data format for blood glucose readings. So the way that OneTouch stores the blood glucose information is not the same as the way that FreeStyle does, or Accu-chek, or any of the other many makes of meter.

Hence my plan.

I'm going to work on a standard data format for blood glucose readings. I'll use a microformat, because it's easy to write software to digest microformats and they're easy to create.

I'm talking with one other person who's going to help me get the initial version ironed out. Then I'm going to contact the folks at dHealth.net, sugarstats.com and sweetspot.dm to see if they will change their software to support loading of blood glucose data in a microformat. And I'll also create some software to convert the export data from OneTouch software into microformats.

What do you think? Does this make sense to you? Do you care about something like this?

I'd be interested in hearing from you.