Introducing Gluroo

The Collaborative Diabetes Logger

Diabetes is hard. But it doesn’t have to be as hard as it is. My family joined the community of people managing type 1 diabetes about 20 months ago when our son was diagnosed. We learned lots over the following months about how to mitigate the impact on our son’s — and our — lives.

Over those first months, we especially noticed that too much of our mental energy was spent thinking about and worrying about diabetes. Recognizing that a lifelong chronic condition is a marathon and not a sprint, it was worth investing in a tool to help.

Gluroo was born.

But what is Gluroo?

Gluroo is a mobile application that runs on Android and iPhones. It helps you log and track all things related to the diabetes that is impacting your family. It’s not just for the person with diabetes, but for their parents, their wife, their husband, their kids, or whoever else helps make sure they’re the healthiest version of themselves.

As a big-tech engineering and product leader, one of the ways I’ve rallied my teams around a vision is a set of “We Believe” statements describing what’s important about what we’re doing and how it’ll help. That background then helps inform the day-to-day decisions of the team building the product and operating the service.

At Gluroo, we believe:

• That diabetes management is important but doesn’t need to be so time-consuming or exhausting.
• That diabetes — especially in new onset cases and kids — is a team effort requiring communication and shared understanding.
• That learning about how food, insulin, and exercise (among many other factors) interact for each specific individual is fundamental to good glycemic control and that logging is the best way to build this learning.
• That group chat messaging is a valuable framework and tool for efficient logging and communication of however much you want to track.
• And that alerts and notifications are most useful when they’re coordinated across the team. They should always be actionable and integrated with logging and communication.

Over the last 14 months, these beliefs have helped shape the design of Gluroo. My family started using the initial app after I’d been working on it for just two weeks. We’ve been “dogfooding” it ever since. We’re grateful to a handful of other families who’ve provided early feedback along the way. Now, we’re preparing to get broader feedback from more families as we invite them to test it with us. We want to make Gluroo as helpful and useful as possible before making it commercially available.

Important Limitations

Gluroo is not being made commercially available at this time. We’re looking for more testers to provide feedback on the application and service.

Dosing decisions should not be made based on Gluroo. The user should follow instructions on the continuous glucose monitoring system.

Gluroo is not intended to replace self-monitoring practices as advised by a physician.

Gluroo is of alpha quality. It is unfinished and has known and unknown problems that can have unintended consequences. These consequences may include injury, mental distress, or even death. We’re making sincere efforts to make the product as useful and safe as possible. After all, we use it in our families too. But it’s an unfinished product and needs to be treated as such.

Install the App to Help Test Gluroo (updated)

If you want to keep learning more about Gluroo, you can sign up for our mailing list at our website’s Join The Beta form. Soon, we anticipate Gluroo will be available for both iOS and Android. You will then be able to download and install the app and get put on a waitlist. Although Gluroo isn’t available commercially, we will be inviting people to join the beta off of the waitlist. Then you will be notified to join the community of testers providing feedback on the unreleased app.

If you’re already signed up, please share this post with others who might be interested in helping and being helped.

Update: No need to sign up anymore. Just Install Gluroo from the Apple App store or Install Gluroo from the Google Play Store.