Diabetes By Heart: Every diabetes reading, reminder and report in one app

01 / Overview

About Diabetes By Heart

02 / The challenge

What Diabetes By Heart needed to solve

DBH had to make daily logging easy enough to replace a notebook, and give the team behind it a way to run the service.

1. 01

   Readings lived in notebooks, notes apps or memory, so entries were easily missed and clinic visits started with guesswork.

2. 02

   Doses were easy to miss, so reminders had to arrive at the right time, even when the app was closed.

3. 03

   A pile of numbers is hard to read, and people needed something they could understand and share.

4. 04

   There was no back office, and the operator needed tools to manage meals, target ranges and announcements.

03 / What we built

How we built Diabetes By Heart

We built a Flutter app on a Node.js, Express and PostgreSQL API with 96 routes, plus a Next.js admin panel for the team that runs the service.

• 01

  Ten kinds of health log

  People log ten kinds of record, from blood glucose, blood pressure and heart rate to weight, oxygen saturation, activity, medication, insulin and food. Each reading is shown against the person's target range.

• 02

  Daily Essentials home screen

  The home screen shows the latest glucose, blood pressure and heart rate with weekly charts. Glucose can be shown in mg/dL or mmol/L.

• 03

  Reminders that arrive on time

  A background job checks every minute for due medicines, insulin and activity and sends a push reminder through Firebase Cloud Messaging, so it arrives even when the app is closed.

• 04

  Food log and diet plans

  The food log shows the day's calories with fats, carbs and proteins, built from breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack meals the team sets up. Diet plans come out as A4 PDFs.

• 05

  PDF reports for the doctor

  People pick a period such as 7 days, month to date or year to date, choose which logs to include and export an A4 PDF report they can share with their doctor.

• 06

  Sign-in options

  Sign-in covers phone, email, Google and Apple, and a forgotten password can be reset by email or text message.

• 07

  Admin panel

  From a Next.js panel the team manages app users, meal categories and meals, vitals target ranges, push notification campaigns and surveys. The dashboard shows user, meal and survey totals with survey results.

• 08

  Logs, reports and roles

  Admins pull an activity report for any user across a date range, review activity and error logs, and control access to the panel with roles and permissions.

04 / The results

What changed for Diabetes By Heart

DBH gives people with diabetes one place for every reading, a reminder when a dose is due and a report they can hand to their doctor.

• Readings that used to sit in notebooks are logged in the app and shown against target ranges.
• Reminders for medicines, insulin and activity arrive even when the app is closed.
• Readings turn into charts and A4 PDF reports a doctor can read.
• The team manages meals, target ranges, push campaigns and feedback from a single admin panel.
• One Dart codebase serves both Android and iOS.