[Novalug] Diabetes Software chance

[Ross Patterson]

At 11:16 7/22/2007, Nino Pereira wrote:
>>Here's my plan should I get the communication specs - to initially make
>>a basic program in Java that will read the meter data, and hold a small
>>local "database" of meter readings. But I need something to hold the
>data in;  what suggestions do you have?
>
>My suggestion? ascii.

CSV.  It's the nearest thing to perfect for tabular data, and that's 
what these meter readings always turn out to be.  Not to mention that 
any decent number-manipulation program will ingest a CSV and produce 
graphs, reports, summaries, etc.

>What you want from your meter is, presumably,
>a number, the glucose level in whatever units you want (I'd favor
>kg/m^3, but I'm sure the medical community uses some weird, non-standard
>unit like mg/l).

Close - it's milligrams of glucose per deciliter of whole blood 
(mg/dl).  It's extremely standard in medicine, just not in chemistry 
:-)  All the diabetic meters use this scale, and have since back when 
it took real lab work to determine, not just a few seconds at home.

>You can call it something like 'glucose.dat'.
>You can read it with an editor: no further coding necessary, and it's
>not even necessary to plot it out.

Although working from CSV, something like OpenOffice Calc or GNUPlot 
will do wonders for you.

>You can add a time and date stamp,

That will be in the meter data already.

>your body temperature, or anything else that you may want.
>
>with the help of the community other meters would be added.
>
>With other meters you'd have to figure out what their
>bits and bites coming into the computer mean, and convert this to
>glucose data.

Generally not.  Most of them now have an ASCII output stream - the 
question is how the data flows between the meter and the 
computer.  It's a lot like the way modems were 25 years ago - 
everything used the Hayes command set (ATDT...), but still lots of 
minor variation.