Last year, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and my life was pretty much flipped upside down for awhile. One thing I immediately set out to do was to find software, preferably open source, that would help me get on track and have an improved health outcome.

There was a lot of software out there but I did not find any that aligned with my needs as a person with diabetes. Instead, I found a lot of mobile apps and software built by companies that put profit first and were not driven by the needs of people with diabetes.

Right then I came up with the idea to start an open source project that made cross-platform apps (iOS, Android, Desktop, Web etc) with the focus of improving the health outcomes of people with diabetes and supporting research. But there were already two great open source projects out there like Nightscout and Tidepool, so why start our own?

Simply put, I wanted to do something different as I’ve seen this great divide in the diabetes community where not only are things like communities, podcasts and advocates divided around what type of diabetes a person has, but also the two open source projects out there were focused only on people with Type 1 diabetes. This is problematic because Type 2 diabetes is left outside of these intentional Type 1 diabetes circles when we should be working together to solve both types of diabetes and pooling our resources together to advocate for an end to both types of diabetes.

 

Glucosio for Android

And so Glucosio was born with the vision that an app was needed that benefits both people with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Not focusing on one or the other, but instead giving equal energy to features that will benefit both types. Our vision was that this new open source project will unite people who have Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes or know someone who does to contribute to the project and in turn help accelerate research for both types while at the same time helping those with diabetes keep track of things that affect their health outcomes.

Last year was a lot of work for the entire Glucosio team. We worked hard to build awesome open source software for people with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and we pulled it off. Glucosio for Android is the first of our diabetes apps you can download today but we also have Glucosio for iOS and Glucosio for Web and an API for researchers that are all being actively worked on.
It is our hope to also have a cross-platform desktop app (OSX, Windows and Linux) in the future as more contributors join to contribute.

And this week, we were excited to announce that Glucosio following in the footsteps of some pretty stellar projects like Docker, Ghost and others has been named one of Black Duck Software’s Top Open Source Projects of 2015.
If you are interested contributing some code, documentation, design, UX or even money (to the Glucosio Foundation) to the effort of helping millions who struggle with diabetes worldwide, we’d love to have your support but you can also spread the word about our project by tweeting or sharing our project site or connecting with us over social media.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BenjaminKerensaDotComMozilla/~3/eQEtjijKTOY/glucosio-named-top-open-source-project