Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a rapidly growing health issue worldwide. Currently, over 537 million adults live with this condition, and by 2045, that number is expected to jump to 783 million. Indonesia faces a significant challenge too, with more than 10 million reported cases in 2018, and likely many more who haven’t even been diagnosed yet.
The Importance of Diet (and Why It’s So Hard)
A crucial part of managing T2DM is Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT), which essentially means carefully planned dietary choices. However, sticking to these diets is often very difficult for patients, with less than 50% globally managing to follow their plans consistently.
Our research shows three main reasons why patients struggle: First, Understanding and Practicality: It’s hard for patients to take complex nutritional advice and apply it to their everyday meals. This is especially true when they need to guess the nutritional content of local foods that don’t have labels.
Second, Emotional and Social Challenges: Dealing with diabetes can be incredibly stressful and emotionally draining. This “diabetes distress,” along with feeling bored with their diet or isolated during meals, can significantly reduce their motivation to stick to the plan.
Third, Systemic Issues: Traditional nutrition counseling sessions are often too short and infrequent. Patients need ongoing support, but they rarely get the continuous guidance required for long-term success.
These obstacles create a difficult cycle: uncontrolled blood sugar leads to more medication, higher risks of complications, a lower quality of life, and increasing healthcare costs.
Technology to the Rescue: The Promise of Mobile Health
Mobile health (mHealth) technology offers a powerful way to bridge this gap. Scientific studies, including extensive reviews of many different research projects, suggest that using mHealth tools can significantly improve blood sugar control (measured by HbA1c levels). Consistently tracking food intake, in particular, seems to be a strong indicator of successful treatment.
AI mHealth: New Innovative Application
Recognizing these challenges, Gedhe Ultimate Innovation (GUI) is developing a groundbreaking application. This app aims to revolutionize diet tracking for T2DM patients by combining advanced Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) technology with a vast Indonesian Food dataset. This innovative combination will allow for highly accurate recognition of food from images.
Beyond just identifying food, the app will empower users to easily plan personalized diet programs based on their individual body weight, height, age, and health goals. They will also be able to conveniently record their daily food and beverage consumption.
GUI’s current research focuses on developing a prototype design for this application, with the ultimate goal of effectively improving dietary adherence among Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus patients, helping them lead healthier lives.
