SugarStats.com Launched - Online Diabetes Management site built with Rails

Hey all,

Just wanted to announce after months of development and beta testing we're launching our new Rails based app for diabetics: http://www.sugarstats.com

It's definitely not you're "typical" Rails based Web 2.0 app, but we think it has some value none-the-less :wink: SugarStats.com provides simple blood sugar tracking for diabetes management and in building it we focused on ease of use and simplicity. I guess you could think of it as web stats for diabetes.

Initially it was a personal project (15 year diabetic here), I learned Rails from scratch to do it which was fun to say the least. With such tremendous feedback from others wanting to use it I pretty much had no choice but to work on it full time.

We're built off good ol' homegrown CRUD/REST with Ajax/RJS sprinkled on in just the right places (MmmmMmmmTasty!). I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done it without Rails or the Rails community (you guys) so I wanted to say thanks for all the help and putting up with my newbie questions in the beginning. You all are quite the fine bunch :slight_smile:

With 194 million people worldwide and 21 million in the U.S. alone coping with diabetes daily, hopefully we can help make a difference and utilize all this great technology at our disposal to help keep things under control.

If you're diabetic or know someone who is, you probably want to check it out:

http://www.sugarstats.com/

I thought some might want to have a glimpse on the technical side so I wrote a post with a few more details: http://www.marstononline.com/2007/sugarstatscom-launches-simple-blood-sugar-tracking-for-diabetes-built-with-ruby-on-rails/

Not to take the wind out of your sails (and this may not anyway), but Revolution Health has had a blood sugar tracker available for months on our Rails-based portal:

--Greg

Greg,

Awesome! Tell you the truth I think the more tools out there for diabetics to utilize the better. And I guess when we started development over a year ago you guys weren't around. The cool thing is that now there are a others who see the need for a solution (sweetspot.fm, mysugars.com etc) and we all take a slightly different slant to it, different feature sets and different interfaces to work with.

This looks interesting, but you need to support data import from meters and pumps otherwise the data entry is going to be a real barrier.

We started out keeping logs, but now that we can just load the data from meters and pumps, we rely on that exclusively.

Michael

Michael,

Yup, we've got a few supported. Unfortunately almost all the major meter manufacturers uses a different or proprietary format and are as far from standardized as you can get. www.bernardfarrell.com/ is actually working on an initiative to collaborate with between them and use a common microformat (similar to hCard). What would be great is if we can a common format with the CGM devices out there, instant access to hundreds of readings throughout the day.