Recent data shows that up to 39 million people in the United States alone have diabetes. The global number reaches 540 million patients. This horrifying statistic explains why diabetes management app development is a much-needed niche. With the cost of managing diabetes projected to reach 803 billion by 2040, it’s clear that such digital solutions are to make the burden easier.
Today, we will discuss how to craft a useful and successful diabetes management app, covering must-have functionality and most likely use cases. Based on JetBase’s experience with custom software development, we’ll estimate the general cost and guide you through the process. Read on to get the key info about diabetes management app development — that will empower you to tackle your own project.
What is a Diabetes Management App and How Does It Work?
Any application that helps people with diabetes manage their illness or adjust their lifestyle to be more comfortable. It also includes apps that medical professionals use for diabetes management in patients, whether hospitalized or not. The main point is that these apps must help people deal with diabetes and prevent complications.
Despite a seemingly narrow field of use, there’s actually quite a bit of diversity among apps for diabetes management. We’ll highlight it below, but suffice it to say, those who want to help people with diabetes can find their digital helper. As technology and the market move forward, the apps go far beyond the advice in dealing with this condition.
Overview of Popular Diabetes Management Apps
To inspire you and highlight the market's variety, here are some of the most prominent examples of diabetes management app development. These apps carved out their part of the market with high quality and standout features, and they’re an example to look up to.
The three apps we’ll look at are:
- MySugr;
- Glucose Buddy;
- Diabetes:M.
First is MySugr, a juggernaut in the market with over 5 million downloads, boasting that it’s an app from people with diabetes for people with diabetes. Now, we haven’t checked the devs' medical logs, but the effort they put into the app certainly shows they care about the users. There are extensive logging features, connection to fitness IoT devices and glucose meters, and a Bolus calculator to track insulin levels.
Another popular choice for diabetes management is Glucose Buddy, which boasts over 30,000 paying customers. This is likely thanks to the fact that it’s an entire suite of services - personal diabetes consultants, an automated A1C (glucose) measurement, and the ability to order a resupply of test strips.
Last is Diabetes:M, which has over 500,000 downloads on Android alone. The app boasts a remote monitoring functionality that makes it perfect for doctors, but that’s not all. It also has an extensive database of foods and a way to log detailed health information. As a result, it’s a diabetes management app that works for regular people as well as medical professionals.
| App | Number of downloads | Features |
|---|---|---|
| MySugr | 5,000,000+ | IoT connectivity, glucose measurements |
| Glucose Buddy | 500,000+ | Personal diabetes consultations, A1C meter |
| Diabetes:M | 500,000+ | Food database, remote monitoring |
Why Invest in Diabetes Management App Development?
As you can see, a diabetes management app can find success thanks to its features. What makes companies invest money in this niche? Well, it can be any (or several) of the following reasons:
Some of these may be more selfless than others as companies strive to offer more affordable alternatives to private clinics and their diabetes-related services. Simplifying a patient’s health data access is a noble cause, too.
However, it’s no secret that diabetes management app development also aims to propel companies to financial success. With the right monetization model, it can be a pretty lucrative niche, generating income based on premium features and plans.
Key Features of a Successful Diabetes Management App
Functionality is vital if you want to set yourself apart from other apps in the market. Here are some killer features that can help distinguish your diabetes management app.
AI and Machine Learning Integration for Predictive Insights
As with most markets, artificial intelligence has reached the diabetes app sector. Here, you can use it to analyze patients’ data and build predictive trends for their condition. This can help pre-diabetic people avoid getting diabetes, while those who have it can more easily track their health.
Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) and Data Tracking
Having an always-on data stream from medical devices can give deeper insight into one’s condition and help with diabetes management. It will highlight glucose level spikes, alert users about the need to take insulin, or simply chart health data over longer periods.
Smart Insulin Delivery and Closed-Loop Control Systems
This feature requires your diabetes management app to integrate with insulin pumps, giving the user granular control over intake levels. As a result, they can limit their insulin level, avoid the risk of hypoglycemia, and adjust doses as they see fit. This requires medical oversight, so enabling auth-specific controls is also a good idea.
Precision Nutrition and Personalized Meal Planning
Diet is essential to diabetes management, making food-related features particularly useful. These can range from scanning a packaging label and getting detailed nutrition info to tracking a user’s meals with in-depth data on how they affect blood glucose levels. Recipe bases can also serve an educational purpose, especially with practical advice from dieticians.
Real-Time Feedback and Health Insights
Instant alerts about the need to take insulin can quite literally be life-savers but feedback isn’t limited to just that. Your diabetes management app can warn users about more physical activity, changes in their diet, or simply a new scan of their vitals.
Integration with Wearable Devices for Holistic Monitoring
Thanks to wearables connectivity, you can turn the app into an all-encompassing health suite. Patients can self-monitor to assess their state or allow doctors to oversee the data from their wearables, allowing them to handle diabetes management remotely.
User-Friendly Interface and Personalized Dashboards
While high-tech functionality is important, keeping the app easy to navigate for all users is still key, broadening your potential audience. This means adding accessibility features and keeping the navigation as simple as possible. Plus, the ability to have a personalized section where users enter their information and set up notifications and analytics.
Diabetes Management App Development Use Cases
While we showed the versatility of diabetes management app development, there’s more of it to explore. To give you some inspiration and highlight what exactly you can create, here are some prime use cases for diabetes apps.
Blood Glucose Monitoring and Automated Tracking
This is, perhaps, the main thing people associate with diabetes and a no-brainer use case. But that doesn’t make it any worse, as keeping glucose levels in check is essential, and a way to track them automatically helps ease patients’ minds. It’s an advantage of having diabetes management technology.
Medication Management and Smart Reminders
About 1 in 3 people aged 65+ have diabetes. For elderly users, reminders may be especially important. Obviously, it’s not just the senior population who may find medication management tools useful, as keeping track of pill intake and scheduling prescription renewals can be bothersome.
Dietary Tracking and Nutrition Management
While diabetes doesn’t restrict one’s diet quite as much as some other conditions, it’s still a problem to contend with. This means nutrition databases, diet planning, meal receipts, and photo-based meal analysis. Make sure to cover this part of diabetes management in some way to simplify patients’ daily lives.
Physical Activity Monitoring and Exercise Planning
Staying active matters for everyone, but even more so for those with diabetes. Building in integration with workout wearables and adding functionality to plan them can be quite helpful. You can center your app around getting those with diabetes in shape, thereby helping them avoid potential complications from their condition.
Telehealth and Remote Monitoring Services
Creating an easy way for patients to contact their doctors and give them up-to-date information makes proper diabetes management more accessible. This includes those in remote regions and patients with limited mobility, so your app can help those who need it most.
However, consider that this type of diabetes management app development requires good streaming algorithms and high-quality data sync protocols, making it a complex use case. You may want the help of a team that has experience with telehealth apps for this one.
Peer Support and Community Engagement for Patients
Considering how many people have diabetes, it makes sense to establish a space for them to talk, share advice and encouragement, and connect. This can be what your diabetes management app offers, a digital community for those dealing with this condition.
How to Start Developing a Diabetes Management App
It’s time to get to the main topic at hand - the actual process of diabetes management app development. We’ll go through it step by step and explain how each stage affects the result.
Step 1: Understanding Your Target Audience and Their Needs
Market research is the only way to begin, as you can discover which features will propel your diabetes management app to success and what users are clamoring for. Here are some tips on research:
- Tip 1: Assess the state of the market by looking at competitors and their quarterly reports and updates;
- Tip 2: Analyze which technologies are helping apps catch on by looking at top apps in your market and seeing which features they’re promoting;
- Tip 3: Look over your initial development plan and determine how you can fit the mold better and whether your “killer feature” will sell well;
- Tip 4: Consult medical specialists and diabetes patients on their problems and figure out how your app can solve them.
Step 2: Choosing the Right App Development Tools
Once you know what the state of the market is like, it’ll be easier to pick the right tech stack. You want the app to be lightweight yet modern and scalable with cross-platform capabilities. Your team should be able to consult you on the optimal stack for a diabetes management application.
Step 3: Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Creating a version with all the essential features lets you assess how well your idea morphs into an actual product. At this stage, it’s important to test everything with your target audience and see what you need to add or tweak in order to get the best possible result.
Step 4: Design, Development, and Testing
With a better idea of what the final version of your diabetes management application should be, polish up its design, implement all necessary features, and do extensive QA. Presenting the best possible version of your product is the easiest way to succeed, after all.
Step 5: Launch and Post-Launch Support
Send out your app into the world with an appropriate marketing push and, if all goes well, capture part of the diabetes management market. Just remember that work doesn’t end there, as you’ll need to build connections in the industry and keep the team going with further updates.
Step 6: Continuous Improvement Based on User Feedback
The diabetes management app updates should include both bug fixes and new functionality, which you decide on based on what the target audience says. Post-release tweaks are an essential part of an app’s lifecycle. You may find a second wind with a particularly useful update as technology keeps improving.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Diabetes Management App?
One core question that affects any project, including the creation of a diabetes management app, is how big the final cost will be. Laying out the budget helps manage the cost and understand how to get a good product without wasting any money. Here’s how JetBase breaks down the cost of a diabetes management app.
Let’s talk about the stages separately:
Stage 1. Research and planning
Time: 280 — 1300 hours
Cost: $11,200 — $45,000
Though it’s just the beginning, extensive research into the diabetes management market and creating a detailed plan for your product will take a lot of work. You’ll have plenty of data on the user needs and the current state of the market, letting you set a course for success.
Stage 2. UX/UI design and development
Time: 640 — 1500 hours
Cost: $25,600 — $48,000
Here, you go from an MVP to a polished, well-rounded product that you can proudly show off to the world, once stage 3 is done. Naturally, this is traditionally the most time-consuming and thus, expensive, stage of the project.
Stage 3. QA and deployment
Time: 240 — 960 hours
Cost: $9,600 — $32,000
One last round of tweaking bugs and ironing out the app’s features before shipping it to the app stores. It may be tempting to cut corners. Yet, don’t compromise the quality of your diabetes management solution, so pay special attention to QA.
Step 4. Post-launch support
Time: 150 — 600 hours
Cost: $1,600 — $25,000
It’s up to the client to determine how long they want to keep pushing updates and how often. However, a certain level of post-release support is always necessary, if only to respond to user feedback.
Revenue Models for Diabetes Management Apps
No matter what the budget for your diabetes management app will look like, it’s always nice to recoup it. The easiest way to do so is by monetizing your product and getting a steady stream of paying users. Here are the main ways to achieve that.
Freemium Model with Paid Upgrades
This simple model lets you offer a free app for those who need diabetes management while monetizing by offering more to those willing to pay. For example, a higher limit on analytics data storage, the ability to scan more meals a day, and so on.
Subscription-Based Model for Ongoing Services
If you’re intending to generate useful content in the long run or provide recurring services, this model can be a cost-effective way for users to get higher-end diabetes care. However, it does require a lucrative value proposition to entice users to subscribe.
In-App Purchases and Additional Features
Similar to a freemium model, you can lock some functions for diabetes management behind a paywall with one-time purchases. For example, one-on-one doctor consultations, food scanners with AI capabilities, or predictive analytics.
Content Monetization through Premium Health Insights
You can invite health professionals to write up diabetes management tips or record video content, as well as offer special consultations. Selling these is an effective way to monetize while building a reputation as an app that champions medical professionals and science.
App-Specific Marketing for Brand Partnerships
Lastly, you can partner up with brands that create diabetes management devices and supplies, such as test strips. By advertising their products in the app, you give users a better idea of what to buy to manage their condition while getting healthy ad revenue in return.
Major Trends in Diabetes Management App Development
As with most industries, the market for diabetes management is advancing along with the improving technologies. This includes, for example, a heavier reliance on cloud connectivity to guarantee that data is always backed up and freely available. Similarly, AI and machine learning could become game changers with faster analytics and fine-tuned predictive elements.
Another trend in apps for diabetes management is the use of telemedicine for personal consultations with medical professionals. It removes the need for patients with limited mobility or immune system issues to visit the hospital in person. This simplifies their daily diabetes management without sacrificing interactions with a doctor.
Finding the Right Development Partner for Your Diabetes App
Making a high-quality diabetes management app is never easy, and with diabetes management app development it can be particularly complex. After all, people stake their health and well-being on your product and the market is already full of excellent apps. So, how do you get ahead when competition is stiff and real expertise is needed? You call JetBase for help.
Our team has over a decade of experience crafting custom and impressive solutions, from mobile apps with IoT integration to telemedicine software. The work we do across industries is known for its forward-thinking design and excellent level of polish. So, if you want a diabetes management app done right, reach out to JetBase.
Get in touch with us today, and let’s schedule a consultation.
