{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,14]],"date-time":"2026-10-14T10:05:50Z","timestamp":1791972350921,"version":"4.3.4"},"reference-count":51,"publisher":"JMIR Publications Inc.","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JMIR Diabetes"],"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:sec sec-type=\"background\">\n                    <jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Diabetes management involves a large degree of data collection and self-care in order to accurately administer insulin. Several mobile apps are available that allow people to track and record various factors that influence their blood sugar levels. Existing diabetes apps offer features that enable integrations with various devices that streamline diabetes management, such as continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps, or regular activity trackers. While this reduces the tracking burden on the users, the research highlighted several issues with diabetes apps, including issues with reliability and trustworthiness. As pumps and continuous glucose monitors are safety-critical systems\u2014where issues can result in serious harm or fatalities\u2014it is important to understand what issues and vulnerabilities could be introduced by relying on popular diabetes apps as an interface for interacting with such devices.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec sec-type=\"objective\">\n                    <jats:title>Objective<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>As there is a lack of research examining in detail the integrations and potential suitability of apps as part of a wider self-management ecosystem, our goal was 2-fold. First, we aimed to understand the current landscape of device integrations within diabetes apps and how well they meet users\u2019 needs. Second, we identified the key issues users of the most popular apps face currently and what features are the source of these issues.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec sec-type=\"methods\">\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Through searches in Android and iPhone app stores, we systematically identified 21 diabetes apps that offer integrations. We conducted a detailed analysis of 602 user reviews. For each review, we recorded its sentiment, features and issues, and additional contextual information provided by the review writers. We used descriptive statistics to analyze the features and issues. We also analyzed the reviews thematically to identify additional trends related to the context of use and the consequences of issues reported by the users.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec sec-type=\"results\">\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>The reviews focused on key features that users found the most important, including device integrations (n=259, 43%), tracking (n=194, 32.2%), data logging (n=86, 14.3%), and notifications (n=70, 11.6%). We found that 327 (54.3%) of the reviews were negative versus 187 (31.1%) positive and 88 (14.6%) neutral or mixed, and the majority of reviews (n=378, 62.8%) mentioned issues. The biggest issues related to device integrations included inability to connect with external devices (n=95, 25.1%), inability to store, manage, or access data (n=49, 22%), unreliable notifications and alerts (n=35, 9.2%), issues caused by or related to software updates (n=31, 8.5%), hardware issues (n=24, 6.4%), and issues with accessing the app, related services, or associated hardware (n=12, 3.2%).<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec sec-type=\"conclusions\">\n                    <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>Apps for diabetes management are a useful part of self-care only if they are reliable and trustworthy, reduce burden, and increase health benefits. Our results provide a useful overview of desired features for diabetes apps alongside key issues for existing integrations and highlight the future challenges for artificial pancreas system development.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.2196\/62926","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,3,20]],"date-time":"2025-03-20T16:52:30Z","timestamp":1742489550000},"page":"e62926-e62926","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":3,"title":["Understanding Device Integrations Within Diabetes Apps: Mixed Methods Analysis of App Features and User Reviews"],"prefix":"10.2196","volume":"10","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7623-882X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jessica","family":"Turner","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9021-0615","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Katarzyna","family":"Stawarz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1010","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,27]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"R1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.mpmed.2018.10.002","article-title":"What is diabetes?","volume":"47","author":"Egan","journal-title":"Medicine (Abingdon)"},{"issue":"1","key":"R2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.4103\/2468-8827.184853","article-title":"WHO Global report on diabetes: a summary","volume":"1","author":"Roglic","journal-title":"Int J Non-Commun Dis"},{"issue":"2","key":"R3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"164","DOI":"10.1177\/1932296818795705","article-title":"Twitter analysis of #OpenAPS DIY artificial pancreas technology use suggests improved A1C and quality of life","volume":"13","author":"Litchman","journal-title":"J Diabetes Sci Technol"},{"issue":"1","key":"R4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.4239\/wjd.v7.i1.1","article-title":"Milestones in the history of diabetes mellitus: the main contributors","volume":"7","author":"Karamanou","journal-title":"World J Diabetes"},{"issue":"9","key":"R5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1159","DOI":"10.1007\/s11886-022-01733-1","article-title":"Closed-loop artificial pancreas therapy for type 1 diabetes","volume":"24","author":"Zhou","journal-title":"Curr Cardiol Rep"},{"key":"R6","unstructured":"Welcome to Nightscout. 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