Photograph by Chelsea Patricia
Atlanta native Jonathan Fitch has managed his Type 1 diabetes for 15 years successfully, including during his time as an undergrad majoring in computer science at Georgia Tech—except for one fateful night. An all-nighter before finals stressed his body out a little too much, which made his body insulin resistant. He had a seizure and ended up in the emergency room. It was scary, but the incident sparked a business idea.
Along with Tech grad and friend Cole Chalhub he co-founded Glucosense, an insulin-monitoring app that marries data analytics with an easy-to-use, educational, and conversational interface. The app launched in January and has a few thousand diabetic users so far.
“People with Type 1 or who are on insulin make 180 or more health-related decisions a day, big and small,” says Fitch. “Diabetes is managed in the weeds every day.” Doctors currently use data extractions for three-month averages to determine how a patient is doing, but Glucosense hopes to give patients more up-to-data data to help them manage outcomes so that extreme events like seizures don’t happen. “If they have data at their fingertips, they can make better decisions, which leads to fewer decisions,” he says.
The app is currently free. Users connect their continuous glucose monitors—and the blood sugar data that they spit out— to the app. They also have the option to connect a wearable or hand-enter data, such as what they ate for breakfast. Data analytics runs in the background, and artificial intelligence assists with the presentation of the data in bite-sized, easy-to-understand snippets.
Last month, the app sent 250,000 insights to the thousands of diabetic users they have so far. “It’s like having a quarter of a million conversations with a provider,” says Fitch.
So far, Glucosense has raised seed funding for the free app. The team hopes to get the attention of insurance providers and more investors soon.
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