A Diabetes Prevention Mobile App based on Health Projection and Gamification

Resumen

Type II diabetes affects 90% of people with diabetes around
the world and is largely the result of excess body weight and
physical inactivity. The self-monitoring of healthy eating and
exercise play an important role in the prevention of this
disease. Mobile applications can be used as an effective tool
in different self-monitoring techniques. However, most of the
current diabetes apps are focused on managing the disease,
not on prevention. Another disadvantage of mobile
applications is that they do not include elements to keep
users' attention and motivation. The applications for
diabetes prevention do not consider these elements because
they aimed to manage the disease or try to prevent it but in
adults. This study aims to prevent the disease earlier with
users aged between 16 and 27 years. Thus, this study
presents a mobile application for diabetes prevention based
on gamification for younger users. Also, it includes the
health projection calculating the probability of getting
diabetes in the future. The app’s usability was tested with 12
users. The results stated that the usability was good, also
the learnability of the app. The app presented in this work is
a start point on diabetes prevention in young users.