Soon, your Fitbit won’t just be monitoring how many steps you take in a day — it will also help you keep tabs on your glucose levels by way of a new partnership. On Tuesday, Medtronic and Fitbit announced a new partnership that seeks to “integrate health and activity tracking for patients living with diabetes and their physicians and care teams.” Fitbit users will be able to see how their exercise impacts glucose levels, hopefully leading to better management of the condition. All this data will be streamlined in a new app — myLog.
“We believe monitoring glucose is a critical element in the management of diabetes and therefore, glucose should be included among other vital signs. As such, it has never been more important to increase the collaboration between healthcare and technology to simplify daily diabetes management for the 29 million patients living with type 2 diabetes in the United States,” said Laura Stoltenberg, vice president and general manager of Non-Intensive Diabetes Therapies at Medtronic. “By creating a connection between physical activity and glucose levels, our iPro2 myLog mobile app solution provides new tools and insights, so that physicians can optimize therapy and patients can better understand how to manage their diabetes.”
Given Fitbit’s usefulness in tracking activity, it seems like a logical next step for the wearable to apply this data to various health conditions. Patients can log into their myLog mobile app to combine data generated by their Fitbit with Medtronic’s iPro2 professional CGM system, which will not only keep tabs on glucose levels, but also send necessary information to a healthcare team. This, Fitbit and Medtronic believe, will allow for more productive conversations around how best to manage diabetes.
“We believe the integration of wearable technology with professional diagnostic tools can provide a more accurate and actionable view of a patient’s physical activity,” said Adam Pellegrini, vice president of Digital Health for Fitbit. “By partnering with Medtronic, we are able to bring the power of Fitbit’s automatic activity tracking together with continuous glucose monitoring, allowing patients and providers to have a more informed conversation.”
MyLog is available for Android and iOS smartphones for patients undergoing evaluation with Medtronic’s iPro2 professional CGM system.
Article originally published in December 2016. Updated on 12-08-2016 to reflect that Fitbit itself will not track glucose levels.
