Kawsar developing diabetes management app

Assistant Computing Professor Dr. Ferdaus Ahmed Kawsar is working on an app that will help patients manage type 2, or adult onset, diabetes.

The app will allow patients to track their food intake, glucose levels and exercise levels with the ability to communicate their records directly with their physicians.

Kawsar has been teaching at ETSU as an assistant professor since the fall of 2017. He received his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2006. He received his master’s degree in computational sciences in 2011 and his doctorate in computational sciences in 2015. Both advanced degrees are from Marquette University.

Kawsar’s first experience working on an app was part of his doctorate dissertation. The project involved detecting activity levels of breast cancer patients. Kawsar created his own activity detection system for the app: a shoe sole insert that connects to your phone by Bluetooth and records the patient’s activity level.

“I always wanted to apply computer science in solving medical type problems,” said Kawsar. “I think that is going to be the future, and it is happening a lot.”

The physical work for the diabetes app did not begin until July of 2018. However, the idea started much earlier. Kawsar’s inspiration for the app came from his parents.

“Both of my parents are diabetic, but my dad, he can manage it well,” he said. “My mom is not that well. I was the one who used to push the insulin on her, but when I came here that fell on my brother, so I was worried about it a little bit. And then, then she started doing it herself. She learned.”

His mother came to visit him during his finals for his doctorate, and he realized that she was not maintaining her condition well. This visit was the trigger for his idea.

“I thought, ‘Okay. What is the big deal about it?’ I tried to find out what are all of these parameters you need to control,” said Kawsar. “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I give her a tool that will manage all of these parameters?’”

There are many current apps that help patients manage diabetes, but Kawsar says he does not like that they rely solely on the patients. He has two important ideas that he wants to add to make his app better than current ones. His first idea is to involve the patients’ doctors.

“I wanted to create a channel to the physicians,” said Kawsar. “The patients, they have all the data, and they go to record the glucose level every day, then they show it to the doctor. Fifteen days. One month. Then the doctors see everything. What I want to do is every time the patients log all their information, it should be available to doctors immediately, or at least within 24 hours. So that’s what we did.”

By having constant access to patients’ data, doctors will be able to see historical data over a long period of time. They will also be able to compare all their patients’ data side-by-side to see any differences or trends.

“When you have all this data over a long period of data for millions of patients, if we are to make it to that level hopefully, then we can actually have a data analysis,” said Kawsar. “What is working? What is not working?Like maybe it works for you, but it doesn’t work for me, but something else works for me. What combination of exercise, food or medicine works for me and what combination works for you? We can customize this.”

Many current apps record the patients’ food and glucose levels, but not their exercise levels. His second idea is to include the same activity detection system that he created for the app he worked on for his doctorate degree. He will include the shoe insoles to help detect the diabetic patient’s activity levels.

“I wanted to see how active these patients are,” Kawsar said.

The app currently only helps manage type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is more complex, and the app would have to go through more rigorous testing to include it.

ETSU students are helping Kawsar build this app. One of his master’s students did her dissertation on the activity detection. The system built was done by a group of his students for a class project. One of his students did so well that he hired her to continue working on it.

Kawsar received two grants for this project. This first grant paid for the equipment, such as the insoles and phones. The second grant helped pay the students working on the app from July 2018 to July 2019.

There is not an official name for the app. Name suggestions from Kawsar’s students include Diabetic Assist and Betic-Track.

Part of the app is finished, but they are still working on it.

Kawsar has a co-investigator in the Quillen College of Medicine. Once they complete the app, their plan is to deploy the system to a study to see if it helps the patients or not. The activity detection is their biggest challenge in finishing the app.

“It works, but it has to work so that when I give it to the patient, it works seamlessly for them,” said Kawsar. “If we don’t include the last part, the activity detection part, I think we are ready, but if we want to include this component, then it will take some time. So we have to make this decision sometime that, maybe for now, we go without that.”

Kawsar is hopeful that the app will be done by the end of this year.