Mafalda Braamcamp Sobral

begego is a system that enables children to learn how to manage Type 1 diabetes on their own.

Diabetes is a global epidemic, today there are 387 million people diagnosed with diabetes and studies say that this number is expected to rise by 50% in less than 15 years. Being a patient of Type 1 diabetes means that your body does not produces enough insulin and so you need to inject yourself with the appropriate amount of insulin throughout the day. To know how much insulin you need, you must understand your eating and sleeping habits, as well as your level of activity. Therefore, this is a complex disease, which with improper treatment can lead to long-term complications such as blindness and kidney failure.

Children with Type 1 diabetes must rely constantly on their parents as they are not able to manage this disease on their own. As they grow up, children will want to become more independent and learn how they can control their own diabetes.

Most children nowadays use a CGM sensor (Continuous Glucose Monitors) and an insulin pump. The CGM is a sensor that is always attached to their body monitoring their blood glucose (BG) levels and the insulin pump is a device that is programmed to give different amounts of insulin throughout the day. Nevertheless, these two devices don’t communicate with each other. 

My solution is called begego and is composed by two components. The first one is a watch, which enables to connect the existing devices that children wear and alerts the user when necessary. The second one is an App, which gathers information received by the watch to provide the user with the appropriate actions to manage their diabetes, while providing updates to the caregivers throughout the day.