Fredrik Debong
Community relations lead, co-founder, mySugr
Fredrik Debong has lived with diabetes for over 30 years. He believes technology is the best way to help spread the right knowledge and attitude to those with diabetes.
How can technology help the management of diabetes?
It keeps us alive! For example just look at blood glucose testing, insulin pumps and Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) devices. Also, I believe technology is the best way to help spread the right knowledge and attitude to all our brothers and sisters with diabetes.
What was the reason behind the launch of mySugr?
To solve our own problem. I’ve lived with diabetes for over 30 years. The therapy can be a grind, so we wanted to be able to feel the progress we make, and utilise our own data in a useful and fun way. By turning it into something positive, it alters how you treat and think about yourself.
How does the Logbook app you have created benefit people with diabetes?
It helps you make better therapy decisions, understand what’s going on and also helps you strive for goals instead of just slogging on. The app also helps you calculate your insulin doses, which many of us have problems with. It is now used by over 700,000 people around the world. I hope it can help even more people.
How did you decide what functions it should perform?
Many people in the company have diabetes — for example, I have type 1 — and so, in designing and updating the technology, we are very much driven by what we need. But we also get over 500 emails every week, where we learn even more about how we can help – community is what drives us.
How is mySugr helping raise awareness of diabetes in National Diabetes Week?
We’ll be helping spread the word about National Diabetes Week to all our digital users, via the app, and I hope it will have a tremendous effect in the UK. It’s very important because although those of us living with diabetes view it as part of our day-to-day lives, we rarely speak about it to others. That has to change. If we would all speak to 10 people, we’d have educated the whole nation about diabetes. We hope to help.
