Comments on: At $10/Month, Is It Your SweetSpot?

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:24:18 +0000

Ok, sweetspot isn’t the first and probably not the last to enter the ‘track your glucose online’ service. Let me tell you of our experience. We wanted to do a startup in the market so we did a ton of research and some proof of concept. We talked to lots of doctors, a practice of a few hundred patient to a hospital that saw 120 patients per day per doctor! We wrote code that communicated with some of the popular meters and demonstarted we can download not just bg data but also health info like exercise, etc. Doctors thought it was a great idea. Patients thought it was a great idea. However, in the end we decided the project was a no go. The income just isn’t there. Like crashley said, $120/year is too much for the majority of the users. We estimated the technical component need around 50000 people to break even in three years. To get that many people you need a few mil of advertising. There’s no way the business can break even and cash flow. I know it is bad because there’s a service that just last month switched to an all free, advertising supported model. They have been in business for 4 years and supports Macs too. The fact that people here don’t know about them indicate that advertising in this space is way too expensive because you are competing against J&J, etc. for the eyeballs. And let’s not talk about the economy… We were all excited about how we can improve, until we saw the numbers…

By: Fernando

Fernando — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:56:52 +0000

the “nike+” for glucose logging.
like the nike site, i think it helps people when they
feel a little “pressure” by the fact that others may be looking at their results
and makes them work a little harder.

By: Dr. Charles Martin

Dr. Charles Martin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 15:25:36 +0000

For the healthcare team, it’s all about what Adam said in terms of having a historical trend line. Automating the process of sharing that data with your doctors in a secure way makes a lot of sense. Knowing what’s been going on with your diabetes before you arrive would help us prepare for your appointment. I can’t help but think it could improve care.

By: crashley

crashley — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:11:48 +0000

frankly, as a type I with not a lot of disposable income, i cant really see the value of this site. my fam and docs are already tied into my info and although aggregate bg number from a wide variety of individuals may be interesting to ponder on i can’t see paying $120/yr for that pleasure.

sorry.

By: Marston A, SugarStats

Marston A, SugarStats — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:01:39 +0000

Great write-up! Yeah we’ve talked with Adam and think he has a great service as well. We definitely agree with a lot of his points, especially direct meter uploading, community sharing and cross-site data migration.

While we do have overlap in many features, we both are slightly different and take a uniquely different approach to things which everyone will see shortly in our new version of SugarStats coming out.

See you guys at Health 2.0!

By: cherise

cherise — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:02:54 +0000

amy-

Thanks for the info:) do you know if sweetspot will work with the Omnipod PDM? I was thinking about joining sugarstats but I am always try g to find an easy way out but I don’t have time to manually enter my numbers, that’s what’s boring about logging on paper.

By: ultrasound gel

ultrasound gel — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:33:26 +0000

it always exciting promises and then a lot of waiting for new diabetes tools ?? why

By: Adam Greene

Adam Greene — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:05:31 +0000

Amy, absolutely. The diabetes world is littered with broken promises in this area, which is a real shame (and that is saying it nicely!!). I have my theories as to why this happens, but we have already started to see the change that is coming. There are some really innovative ‘groups’ (many are just individuals like myself) working outside of the healthcare space, trying to push the envelope. These are groups like Triabetes.org & Insulin Dependence, Diabetes Training Camps, TuDiabetes…. and more are coming.

SweetSpot, I feel, is just getting started, and I am committed to going beyond logging and displaying statistics. But Amy, that last comment of yours is the challenge that must be met and which keeps my feet to the fire. I appreciate you writing that.

By: Mandy Davis

Mandy Davis — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:18:03 +0000

I forgot to say – the Diabetease site also downloads from the meter.

By: Mandy Davis

Mandy Davis — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:16:16 +0000

I use a free tool called Diabetease. It’s been around for years and is really good.

https://www.diabetease.com/dcs/public/index.jsp

Mandy