Empowering People with Diabetes

Using Xamarin, we built iOS and Android apps to help people with diabetes better manage their condition. This technology makes the day-to-day effort of monitoring blood sugar easier.

Our cross-platform apps are now available in 30+ languages in 120 countries. The apps improved the client’s usage analytics, and the number of users has increased 5x.

What We Did

Mobile Development, Cross-Platform Development, Usage Analytics, Product Localization, Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

Tech Stack

Xamarin, C#, Highcharts, Sharpen, Bluetooth Low-Energy®, Google Analytics

Opportunity

A pharmaceutical and medical device company created a mobile diabetes management app for users of its blood glucose testing products. We have worked with this client for many years, helping them expand their technology capabilities.

The mobile app connects to blood glucose meters over Bluetooth®. Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics alike use the app and over 1M blood glucose readings are collected from users each month. The app analyzes data for the user, providing them with health reports and therapy advice. Both Android and iOS platforms are supported with separate code bases.

It was critical for our client to be able to make updates to the app quickly, yet within a process appropriate for software regulated by the FDA. As the app evolved with new features and maintenance, managing two separate apps (iOS and Android) became increasingly difficult.

healthcare app screen examples

Solution

By understanding the complexity of the existing apps, the need for a great user experience, and the product roadmap, SEP made a compelling case to bring the two mobile apps together using Xamarin. This approach allowed our client to move to a single code base for future testing and updates.

To make the transition, SEP used a tool called Sharpen to bring the original Android app Java code to C# and into the Xamarin platform. Feature-by-feature, SEP replicated the functionality of the existing apps into a single C# code base. The new approach also enabled our team to introduce platform-specific features for Android or iOS users from the single code base.

Results

With just one core set of consolidated code written in C# for both Android and iOS, SEP was able to:

  • Eliminate duplication of efforts and eliminate the risk of having safety critical components in multiple places
  • Reduce organizational risk
  • Enhance the automated testing to maximize the testing effectiveness while increasing the feedback for developers, a major requirement for FDA-regulated devices
  • Establish a framework for faster software releases in the future
  • Significantly decrease future development costs

In addition, our client has been extremely pleased with the new apps including improvements to usage analytics. These analytics allow our client to better understand how the app is used and has allowed them to see data that dramatically reduces time to resolve field issues. The number of app users has increased five times as many users as before and blood glucose meter readings transferred to the app have consistently increased. The app is currently available in 30+ languages and 125 countries.

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