Day 1

Attendance:
Haley Barrs
Brad Bostwick
Jamie Burns
Lindy Dugger
Kyle Dunaway
Allison Johnson
Hyong Ji (Julia) Kim
Allan Lansche
Hammy Mercer
Rejon Noah
Jeremy Rowland
Nicole Sanhamel
Steven Savage
David Werner-Sexton
Amber Stahl
Blake Williams

Today we all introduced ourselves and stated our majors. We also passed around a roll sheet with our email addresses. Then we started a discussion about various chronic manageable conditions on which we could potentially use for our project topic. Some of our ideas were asthma, aids, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and psoriasis.

After a few minutes we came to the decision to do diabetes because Mr. Shamp seemed pretty excited about it! We also have a group member who has diabetes so we thought it would be helpful to get some inside information.

Some of the people in our group did not know a whole lot about diabetes so she told us all about it and what she has to do each day to maintain it. When the amount of insulin gets too high or too low it can be hard to read on the monitor. Inhaled insulin and blister packs (powder) are currently some ways that diabetes is controlled.

The group decided it would be a good idea to have a device that could monitor blood sugar levels constantly. We also thought the idea of an electronic book would be helpful as well. One of the members mentioned a bluetooth heart monitor. This device texts the patients hospital if they are about to have a heart attack. It does this by measuring electrical impulses from the heart and creates an ECG. We were also thinking we could use this same technology for diabetes.

We also discussed the fact that diabetes is not only treatable, but preventable as well. An increasing number of little kids are developing type 2 diabetes due to obesity at a young age. If parents and teachers inform children about diabetes and the obesity epidemic from a very young age, it should very well decrease the number of these cases in the future.

<3 Nicole