D Sharp is now a free service.

After great consideration for the current app market and the cost of operating a mobile web app, we have decided that the best way to continue operating D Sharp as a cross-platform, cross-device web app is to remove the subscription service and move to completely free mobile and native apps.

The cost and complexity of maintaining multiple billing systems along with monthly credit card processing and per transaction fees ate up a considerable amount of our time and funds. The lack of standardization or universality made it difficult to exist as an independent mobile product. A problem we are not the only ones to face.

The service and support our customers received will remain the same. While we could have shutdown D Sharp completely, we felt that it would be unfair to existing users to take away a service that has been so positively embraced.

To place our decision entirely in the realm of business would not be fair to our current situation or the spirit behind the creation of D Sharp.

As many of you know, D Sharp evolved from a personal request for a diabetes management app from me to my husband in preparation for a second pregnancy. Well, that second pregnancy was a successful one and our daughter arrived in January. Since then life has been busy, to say the least.

The time I thought I would have just isn’t there. I’ve read many articles from mom entrepreneurs on how they manage to do it. There are many amazing parents out there running successful startups and businesses and I’m sure they are also completely devoted to their children. However, our circumstances have made it too large a challenge for us to juggle a business, one full-time job, a three-year-old and a newborn. And managing a chronic illness also appears on that ever-growing to-do list, too.

We are still very proud of all that we accomplished with D Sharp and we hope that it will continue to help people with diabetes manage some of the challenges that come with this disease.

All the very best,
Jennifer McAfee and Luke Galea
Co-Founders, D Sharp Mobile Diabetes Management

I was able to approach the test with curiosity and and a bit of cockiness because I was pretty confident that I was going to rock this test with a strong beat, open valves and a nice flow — sounds a little more like a musical composition than a heart ultrasound.

Perhaps one day I will not feel such ease. However, I hope that I will be comfortable with the procedure as a routine part of my diabetes care.

As I’ve learned recently, there are many types of echocardiograms and the one I had was a transthoracic one. It was pretty fast, about 25 minutes, and it was relatively painless. I experienced a little bit of discomfort as the transducer was pushed against my chest, but it was very mild.

The Results:

My heart is in good shape and I hope to keep it that way. Statistics such as “80 per cent of people with diabetes will die as a result of a heart attack or stoke,” scare me. I’d rather not be part of that dismal number, so I’m going to take care of my heart.

I’m going to take care of it because my dad’s heart attack and death at 54 scared me way more than any statistic could. A lot of people don’t have a friendly, loving face attached to the statistics their doctors use to warn them to take care of themselves. But if you do, use it to take action and stay healthy.

My takeaway from this experience: The routine blood work, tests and frequent appointments, however annoying they can be, have to be done. Making them part of your regular care early on makes them a little less scary, plus you’ll be able to catch problems faster and think of measures to keep them little before they become big and threatening.

The first thing we love is D Sharp’s ability to work on many devices. This can be hard to explain in a world of native apps and device-specific software, but because D Sharp is hosted in the cloud and built using HTML5, you can access it from any device with an Internet connection.

D Sharp is designed to work just as well on your smartphone as your computer or tablet. It’s the only mobile diabetes management app hosted in the cloud, so you can start using the app even if you don’t have a smartphone or are thinking of switching platforms. Your data isn’t stored on your device, so you never have to give up your information.

I have an iPhone, but sometimes I log from my laptop or ask my husband to make an entry from his Samsung Galaxy S, which uses Android. My Nook does the trick, too. I suspect the e-reader approach is going to be a great option for a lot of people without smartphones.

A single-entry interface is central to D Sharp’s design. Whether you’re logging blood glucose, carbs, weight or blood pressure, just start with the new entry button. Other apps that I tried forced me to go in and out of different tabs or screens to record metrics such as medicine and exercise separately. Personally, I found this very time consuming.

Plus, D Sharp customizes your experience during sign-up, so you’ll only see the measures specific to your care. I had very clear ideas on how I wanted to record my diabetes. I knew I wasn’t going to use it if I couldn’t tailor the experience.

Diabetes involves some pretty complicated math. Counting carbs and calculating insulin requirements for a quick snack can get difficult, especially when a correction for a high or low is needed. My insulin pump has a feature to help with this, but many people with diabetes can’t afford a pump or have decided this therapy isn’t right for them.

The D Sharp insulin calculator uses the user’s ratios and insulin type to suggest a dose based on grams of carbs and active insulin. This can make snack time and meals a little easier and for pump users, it speeds up the logging time.

I found staying on top of my diabetes most challenging when I go for six months between doctor’s visits. I tend to be most diligent right before I see the doctor. There’s nothing like someone else scrutinizing my numbers to make me behave, which is why D Sharp sends a weekly progress report to encourage you to spot trends in the graphs and charts. The “big picture” view can be a lot easier to reflect upon than numbers here and there on your glucometer.

We have many other features that we created to make managing diabetes a little easier. We’ll explain more about each of them and why they were designed as we go along.

I have type 1 diabetes. That doesn’t make me special, perhaps a little unique in that only about 10 per cent of PWDs have this type. This is the first point because it means that D Sharp comes from a very personal place. My life would be very different without it and D Sharp never would have been created.

I experience the ups and downs of this disease like the people who use our product. At times this makes me insightful, at other times it means I can be forgetful and generalize my experiences. I’ll try my best not to do this. Each person’s care is truly unique and I want to understand more about type 2, gestational and parents of children with diabetes.

My dad had type 1 diabetes. I wish that “had” meant that he benefited from a cure, but here it means that he passed away in 2005 from a heart attack. He was diagnosed in the early ‘60s as a teenage boy and diabetes care looked a lot different then. This is important to the D Sharp story because diabetes has been a part of my life since the day I was born.

Diabetes took my Dad at 54 and his right leg in his 40s. He suffered from atherosclerosis, neuropathy and kidney failure. By no accounts was he a “good diabetic”, though he did make an effort as he got older. I am a “good diabetic”, though I despise that term.

For me, complications aren’t just a list of warnings from my doctor. If you ever wonder how I can be so diligent about my care, this is one of my biggest motivators.

We are not doctors. We are always looking for input from doctors and researchers because we want to implement new features and evolve to meet best practices for diabetes care. This isn’t just a protect-our-butts disclaimer. Yes, you should always consult your doctor when starting something new like D Sharp. That is true. But we want you to know that we’re here to support you from the personal and technical sides of diabetes.

My endocrinologist and diabetes educator are amazing and I couldn’t do this without them. They are a big, important part of my care, but they are only slices of the no-sugar-added pie. My everyday choices make up most of the pie. If you’re living with a chronic disease, you have to count yourself and the tools you choose to manage your disease as a big, healthy serving.

My husband and business partner is a technical genius. Saying this raises the bar pretty high, I know. He’s done blushing because when you work hard to create a product that is going to help people with a disease of epidemic proportions, you feel pretty damn good about it.

We’ve created some unique features using exciting, emerging technologies and we’re going to keep adding more. If you want to see D Sharp do something, we’re going to try and make it happen. I’ve been rattling off my dream features for months and I keep getting what I asked for. My requests are still numero uno, being the wife and business partner, but we’ll get to yours too.

Stay tuned for part three to hear more about our favourite features in the app.

Part 1 is the very start of D Sharp. In Part Two, I’ll tell you more about us and to top it off, I’ll brag about what we’re doing today. It is kind of my baby, after all.

After using messy paper logbooks during my first pregnancy to chart my rapidly changing insulin demands, I figured there must be an existing iPhone app to help me prepare for a second pregnancy. I found a few, but I found them cumbersome. I knew this would deter me from logging diligently. My pump couldn’t sync with a Mac and I wanted more than simply uploading glucometer readings. I asked my endocrinologist if he could recommend one, but he couldn’t. The diabetes educator couldn’t either.

When my husband Luke asked me what he should create with some new technologies he was interested in, I didn’t think twice about requesting a diabetes app. I knew what I wanted and he didn’t hesitate with getting to work.

My seemingly simple request and his desire to work with HTML5, Node.js, MongoDB and JQuery Mobile have made the last few months a bit of a whirlwind.

Had I said I really wanted an app that was part Angry Birds, part Tetris and played Top 40 hits, we’d be in a very different position — namely, leveling up while lounging on the couch instead of pouring our hearts into what we now call D Sharp.

I drew out what I wanted on scrap paper and Luke started coding. It wasn’t long before I was using “Pumper” to record my blood glucose. I started asking for new features and new features were added as we found areas that other apps were deficient in. My wish list of what I wanted it to do grew faster than Luke could implement the features, but he was excited to overcome the technical challenges and research medical best practices.

It wasn’t long before we realized that we had something that would appeal to more than just me. With our personal and professional backgrounds, we started to work out the logistics of something exciting and terrifying: the Startup.