Dario – the Phone-linked fingerprick system

Having spent a bit of time (200 or so test strips) getting to know Dario over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come to find that it’s actually a pretty nice system to work with. 

The app is available in the iOs App store – I’m not too sure of the availability on Android. The system is split into a device that plugs into the phone and the software, which you can use separately from the device. The device is available from Advanced Therapeutics at a fee now, however when I obtained it, you paid nothing for it. 

For those interested, the test strips on the NHS cost £14.95 per 50, and I’ll soon be checking whether the SD Codefree strips also work in it – there is a marked similarity in the way they appear…

The device consists of a strip holder that goes into the headphone socket, a lancing device and a strip holder. The strips come in packs of 50 that are sealed into two pots of 25. They come with a warning that they should not be used after being unsealed for a month, and when I tried to use a set that were some 6 months open, this warning was pertinent as the strips read approximately 6mmol/l too high. A warning to be heeded. 

As a device it’s very pocketable and seems to work nicely.

The bigger piece here is the software. It’s very simple to enter a reading and comes complete with a bolus calculator. I’ve been using this for the last week and it seems to do a decent job of estimating the required bolus, although I have been having to add 50% of my protein intake as carbs in order to get the correct dose. As a bolus calculator it seems as good as that on the Abbott Libre, however it is much easier to use by virtue of using the iPhone and not the rubbish interface of the Libre. 



It also provides a useful statistics overview screen, estimating what your Hba1C is, and showing how you’ve done against your input range.





In combination with this is a personalised website, very similar to that which you get with Diabetes Connect. All your data is logged to there and you can generate PDF reports and CSV files for your own use. The format of the CSV files is a little sub-optimal but all in all, it seems to work. 

I’m surprised by how easy it has turned out to be to use and integrate with life, and the fact that the bloods are always added to the phone and synced to the cloud and the insulin is worked out and synced makes it a really, really easy platform to use to capture all of your data together in one place.

If there is one thing I’d like to see improved, it’s the graphs, which could show insulin and carbs more effectively when trying to pattern spot. As a product, it’s probably the best I’ve seen in terms of linking all of these together when using MDI.